A passionately presented, faith-based guide to leading others.
Principles of leadership, as seen through a Christian lens.
Bourgond (Setting Your Course, 2014), a minister and founder of Shoreview, Minnesota–based Heart of a Warrior Ministries, takes a decidedly faith-based approach to leadership in this skillfully written book. The quirky title (and the subtitle, “Principles and Practices You Can Chew On”) refer to a variety of leadership strategies, techniques, and tips, compiled into brief chapters that one can fruitfully read randomly or in order. It’s a broad-brush, somewhat haphazard approach, but it’s neatly organized into three sections, dealing with thought, emotion, and implementation. In the first part, titled “Head,” Bourgond appropriately discusses such key leadership attributes as prioritizing, making good decisions, adjusting expectations to reality, and overcoming barriers. The second part, “Heart,” offers chapters on topics such as “Values,” “Integrity,” and “Centering,” which focus more on one’s character and approach to life. The longest, most process-oriented part, “Hand,” concludes the book and addresses typical leadership issues, including establishing goals and objectives; recruiting, interviewing, and developing other potential leaders; motivating individuals and mobilizing teams; and resolving conflicts. These are all covered diligently but lightly, without a lot of depth. This is standard fare for leadership books, but this work’s unabashedly religious overtone distinguishes it. Each chapter features a sprinkling of excerpts from or references to Scripture; throughout, the author weaves his deeply held Christian beliefs, driven by “five major ministry insights” that center on “godly leadership,” with more typical, secular content. For example, to describe a leader “from a biblical point of view,” Bourgond excerpts this definition by Dr. J. Robert Clinton, a leadership professor at California-based Fuller Theological Seminary: “A leader is a person with a God-given capacity and a God-given responsibility to influence a specific group of God’s people toward his purposes for the group.” As a result, this book will likely appeal most to religious leaders and other devout Christians.
A passionately presented, faith-based guide to leading others.Pub Date: May 23, 2018
ISBN: 978-1-5320-4718-3
Page Count: 284
Publisher: iUniverse
Review Posted Online: Aug. 6, 2018
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
The Stoics did much better with the much shorter Enchiridion.
A follow-on to the author’s garbled but popular 48 Laws of Power, promising that readers will learn how to win friends and influence people, to say nothing of outfoxing all those “toxic types” out in the world.
Greene (Mastery, 2012, etc.) begins with a big sell, averring that his book “is designed to immerse you in all aspects of human behavior and illuminate its root causes.” To gauge by this fat compendium, human behavior is mostly rotten, a presumption that fits with the author’s neo-Machiavellian program of self-validation and eventual strategic supremacy. The author works to formula: First, state a “law,” such as “confront your dark side” or “know your limits,” the latter of which seems pale compared to the Delphic oracle’s “nothing in excess.” Next, elaborate on that law with what might seem to be as plain as day: “Losing contact with reality, we make irrational decisions. That is why our success often does not last.” One imagines there might be other reasons for the evanescence of glory, but there you go. Finally, spin out a long tutelary yarn, seemingly the longer the better, to shore up the truism—in this case, the cometary rise and fall of one-time Disney CEO Michael Eisner, with the warning, “his fate could easily be yours, albeit most likely on a smaller scale,” which ranks right up there with the fortuneteller’s “I sense that someone you know has died" in orders of probability. It’s enough to inspire a new law: Beware of those who spend too much time telling you what you already know, even when it’s dressed up in fresh-sounding terms. “Continually mix the visceral with the analytic” is the language of a consultant’s report, more important-sounding than “go with your gut but use your head, too.”
The Stoics did much better with the much shorter Enchiridion.Pub Date: Oct. 23, 2018
ISBN: 978-0-525-42814-5
Page Count: 580
Publisher: Viking
Review Posted Online: July 30, 2018
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Aug. 15, 2018
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
Doyle offers another lucid, inspiring chronicle of female empowerment and the rewards of self-awareness and renewal.
More life reflections from the bestselling author on themes of societal captivity and the catharsis of personal freedom.
In her third book, Doyle (Love Warrior, 2016, etc.) begins with a life-changing event. “Four years ago,” she writes, “married to the father of my three children, I fell in love with a woman.” That woman, Abby Wambach, would become her wife. Emblematically arranged into three sections—“Caged,” “Keys,” “Freedom”—the narrative offers, among other elements, vignettes about the soulful author’s girlhood, when she was bulimic and felt like a zoo animal, a “caged girl made for wide-open skies.” She followed the path that seemed right and appropriate based on her Catholic upbringing and adolescent conditioning. After a downward spiral into “drinking, drugging, and purging,” Doyle found sobriety and the authentic self she’d been suppressing. Still, there was trouble: Straining an already troubled marriage was her husband’s infidelity, which eventually led to life-altering choices and the discovery of a love she’d never experienced before. Throughout the book, Doyle remains open and candid, whether she’s admitting to rigging a high school homecoming court election or denouncing the doting perfectionism of “cream cheese parenting,” which is about “giving your children the best of everything.” The author’s fears and concerns are often mirrored by real-world issues: gender roles and bias, white privilege, racism, and religion-fueled homophobia and hypocrisy. Some stories merely skim the surface of larger issues, but Doyle revisits them in later sections and digs deeper, using friends and familial references to personify their impact on her life, both past and present. Shorter pieces, some only a page in length, manage to effectively translate an emotional gut punch, as when Doyle’s therapist called her blooming extramarital lesbian love a “dangerous distraction.” Ultimately, the narrative is an in-depth look at a courageous woman eager to share the wealth of her experiences by embracing vulnerability and reclaiming her inner strength and resiliency.
Doyle offers another lucid, inspiring chronicle of female empowerment and the rewards of self-awareness and renewal.Pub Date: March 10, 2020
ISBN: 978-1-9848-0125-8
Page Count: 352
Publisher: Dial Books
Review Posted Online: Dec. 21, 2019
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Jan. 15, 2020
PROFILES
SEEN & HEARD
SEEN & HEARD
© Copyright 2025 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.
