A well-researched and well-designed call to embrace awkwardness.
Pryor outlines a strategy to make awkwardness work to your advantage in this self-help book.
In her nonfiction debut, the author, a workplace performance expert, speaker, and executive coach, explores the nature of feeling awkward, questioning where it comes from and observing how people typically react to it. Pryor likens the sensation to a balancing act, with risk tolerance on one side and confidence, experience, and, especially, conformity on the other. The fulcrum is a quality the author refers to as “EEE”: Easily Empathetically Embarrassed. Consulting a wide array of works, from self-help books to psychological and anthropological studies, Pryor outlines the ubiquitous nature of awkwardness in modern society (“Even if you’ve lived a pretty charmed life with relatively few uncertainties,” she writes, referring to the Covid-19 pandemic, “the beginning of 2020 blew up that track record for every damn one of us”). She notes the high social costs associated with awkwardness (“we avoid it like the plague and work hard to eliminate it at all costs”), but she insists that embracing awkwardness is perfectly natural, even on an evolutionary level—she asserts that if somebody feels awkward in a social interaction they should give their brain “a little nod of gratitude” because registering wary awkwardness in such circumstances is exactly what the brain’s designed to do.
In the course of fluidly readable chapters full of insets and numbered points, the author lays out dozens of approaches to dealing with the “mental blocks” that people tend to put up in their own minds regarding awkward moments or situations. Throughout the text, Pryor takes an easy-going, approachable stance, regularly assuring her readers that she herself has a long history with awkwardness, asserting that if she can work through some of the most self-defeating aspects of it, so can they. At every point, she stresses that awkwardness is a natural reaction to uncertain situations; she contrasts this with overconfidence, which the author identifies as a weakness. “Feeling awkward means you’re taking chances,” she writes in a typically encouraging line, “and I love that look on you.” She reassures her readers that the judgment of others is seldom as bad as people think it is, owing to a psychological phenomenon known as “the illusion of transparency”—in reality, others can’t read our insecurities as well as we assume they can. Pryor is wonderfully convincing when pointing out how much of a difference that knowledge should make to how self-critical we are—as she spicily puts it, “Most people don’t give a rat’s arse about how you look or what you’re doing.” Pryor notes that due to social media’s amplifying effect, we now live in an era of “cringe,” when it seems like the slightest awkward moment will be broadcast around the world. The author also argues that “bravery requires being off balance,” and that real growth can be achieved only by occasionally feeling the awkwardness of not knowing what you’re doing. For many readers accustomed to the relentless cool-scrutiny of our online world, Pryor’s warm, intelligent reassurances will be much appreciated.
A well-researched and well-designed call to embrace awkwardness.Pub Date: Sept. 26, 2023
ISBN: 978-1646871452
Page Count: 200
Publisher: Ideapress Publishing
Review Posted Online: Aug. 11, 2023
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Oct. 1, 2023
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
These are not hard and fast rules, but Meyer delivers important reading for those engaged in international business.
A helpful guide to working effectively with people from other cultures.
“The sad truth is that the vast majority of managers who conduct business internationally have little understanding about how culture is impacting their work,” writes Meyer, a professor at INSEAD, an international business school. Yet they face a wider array of work styles than ever before in dealing with clients, suppliers and colleagues from around the world. When is it best to speak or stay quiet? What is the role of the leader in the room? When working with foreign business people, failing to take cultural differences into account can lead to frustration, misunderstanding or worse. Based on research and her experiences teaching cross-cultural behaviors to executive students, the author examines a handful of key areas. Among others, they include communicating (Anglo-Saxons are explicit; Asians communicate implicitly, requiring listeners to read between the lines), developing a sense of trust (Brazilians do it over long lunches), and decision-making (Germans rely on consensus, Americans on one decider). In each area, the author provides a “culture map scale” that positions behaviors in more than 20 countries along a continuum, allowing readers to anticipate the preferences of individuals from a particular country: Do they like direct or indirect negative feedback? Are they rigid or flexible regarding deadlines? Do they favor verbal or written commitments? And so on. Meyer discusses managers who have faced perplexing situations, such as knowledgeable team members who fail to speak up in meetings or Indians who offer a puzzling half-shake, half-nod of the head. Cultural differences—not personality quirks—are the motivating factors behind many behavioral styles. Depending on our cultures, we understand the world in a particular way, find certain arguments persuasive or lacking merit, and consider some ways of making decisions or measuring time natural and others quite strange.
These are not hard and fast rules, but Meyer delivers important reading for those engaged in international business.Pub Date: May 27, 2014
ISBN: 978-1-61039-250-1
Page Count: 288
Publisher: PublicAffairs
Review Posted Online: April 15, 2014
Kirkus Reviews Issue: May 1, 2014
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