An inspirational perspective on an unusual leadership style.
Bhalla (The Curse and the Cup, 2014, etc.), delivers a multilayered guide to “soulful leadership.”
The author, a self-described “globally recognized thinker-doer” who works as a consultant, speaker, and leadership coach, believes that people are living in a “VUCA” world: “Volatile,” “Uncertain,” “Complex,” and “Ambiguous.” The only way to navigate this new world is through soulful leadership, he says, which he defines as “a conscious desire to use power and resources to increase the well-being and prosperity of the greater many, not just the privileged few.” A soulful leader is the opposite of an egotistical leader, he notes, as the latter is identifiable by a tendency to disrupt and distract, an insistent need for rewards and recognition, poor listening skills, impatience, and an intolerance of dissent. In contrast, soulful leaders have substance, are authentic, and have a clear vision. “Soulful leaders are neither timid nor squeamish,” Bhalla says. They don’t exist in a bubble, however; they must extend their “orbit” to employees, customers, and to the planet. Bhalla illustrates the parameters of soulful leadership through fictional scenarios and real-life situations faced by leaders like Winston Churchill and Nelson Mandela. Each essay also includes “Think About It,” “Talk About It,” and “Act on It” suggestions to put esoteric ideas into practice. Although Bhalla’s prose is precise, it can be textbook-dry; when discussing psychotherapist Alfred Adler’s theory on success, for example, he writes, “For him, success is a purely competitive concept, a fixation that robs moment-to-moment living of all joy, since living is deferred to some uncertain time in the future after the individual feels fulfilled by success.” The author’s approach to the theories’ applications, however, is more playful. For instance, the author intersperses poems among the essays, he says, because poetry taps into the soul “in a way that can’t be accomplished by merely appealing to the mind.” Regarding the Emily Dickinson poem “I’m Nobody! Who Are You?” he writes about establishing an “ ‘I am a nobody’ culture in your own organization and workplace.” Forward-thinking organizations will find these concepts to be timely and useful.
An inspirational perspective on an unusual leadership style.Pub Date: July 7, 2017
ISBN: 978-1-62865-421-9
Page Count: -
Publisher: Motivational Press
Review Posted Online: Aug. 10, 2017
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
An extravaganza in Bemelmans' inimitable vein, but written almost dead pan, with sly, amusing, sometimes biting undertones, breaking through. For Bemelmans was "the man who came to cocktails". And his hostess was Lady Mendl (Elsie de Wolfe), arbiter of American decorating taste over a generation. Lady Mendl was an incredible person,- self-made in proper American tradition on the one hand, for she had been haunted by the poverty of her childhood, and the years of struggle up from its ugliness,- until she became synonymous with the exotic, exquisite, worshipper at beauty's whrine. Bemelmans draws a portrait in extremes, through apt descriptions, through hilarious anecdote, through surprisingly sympathetic and understanding bits of appreciation. The scene shifts from Hollywood to the home she loved the best in Versailles. One meets in passing a vast roster of famous figures of the international and artistic set. And always one feels Bemelmans, slightly offstage, observing, recording, commenting, illustrated.
Pub Date: Feb. 23, 1955
ISBN: 0670717797
Page Count: -
Publisher: Viking
Review Posted Online: Oct. 25, 2011
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Feb. 1, 1955
From the national correspondent for PBS's MacNeil-Lehrer Newshour: a moving memoir of her youth in the Deep South and her role in desegregating the Univ. of Georgia. The eldest daughter of an army chaplain, Hunter-Gault was born in what she calls the ``first of many places that I would call `my place' ''—the small village of Due West, tucked away in a remote little corner of South Carolina. While her father served in Korea, Hunter-Gault and her mother moved first to Covington, Georgia, and then to Atlanta. In ``L.A.'' (lovely Atlanta), surrounded by her loving family and a close-knit black community, the author enjoyed a happy childhood participating in activities at church and at school, where her intellectual and leadership abilities soon were noticed by both faculty and peers. In high school, Hunter-Gault found herself studying the ``comic-strip character Brenda Starr as I might have studied a journalism textbook, had there been one.'' Determined to be a journalist, she applied to several colleges—all outside of Georgia, for ``to discourage the possibility that a black student would even think of applying to one of those white schools, the state provided money for black students'' to study out of state. Accepted at Michigan's Wayne State, the author was encouraged by local civil-rights leaders to apply, along with another classmate, to the Univ. of Georgia as well. Her application became a test of changing racial attitudes, as well as of the growing strength of the civil-rights movement in the South, and Gault became a national figure as she braved an onslaught of hostilities and harassment to become the first black woman to attend the university. A remarkably generous, fair-minded account of overcoming some of the biggest, and most intractable, obstacles ever deployed by southern racists. (Photographs—not seen.)
Pub Date: Nov. 1, 1992
ISBN: 0-374-17563-2
Page Count: 192
Publisher: Farrar, Straus and Giroux
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Sept. 1, 1992
© Copyright 2026 Kirkus Media LLC. All Rights Reserved.
Follow
Popular in this Genre
We can’t wait for you to join Kirkus!
It’s free and takes less than 10 seconds!
Already have an account? Log in.
OR
Sign in with GoogleTrouble signing in? Retrieve credentials.
Welcome Back!
OR
Sign in with GoogleTrouble signing in? Retrieve credentials.
