A proactive take on relating more effectively at work.
Latting and Ramsey offer a step-by-step guide to improving work relationships.
In this nonfiction book, readers are encouraged to learn to manage their emotions, resolve conflict, and promote positive changes in their professional environments. The authors (Latting is a University of Houston professor emerita and president of a leadership consulting group; Ramsey is a writer and former professor of management at Texas Southern University) use behavioral science theories and empirical research to inform their practical recommendations. They state, “Changing the outcome of problematic situations requires making conscious decisions to try something different. Using these skills seldom comes naturally.” Their Conscious Change model is built on six principles, each with its own skill set. According to the first principle, one must test negative assumptions: The authors state that readers should “consider the possibility that you may be making up stories about what happened during an interaction or exchange.” With the second principle, the authors counsel readers to clear their emotions and aspire toward a neutral or positive emotional state. The third principle directs readers to build effective relationships through listening, inquiry, and feedback exchange. Using the fourth principle, readers will be prepared to foster equitable and inclusive work environments by learning to bridge differences. The fifth principle, the conscious use of the self, emphasizes accepting responsibility and maintaining integrity. Finally, to initiate change, the authors urge readers to use the sixth principle by committing to their own transformations and addressing systemic issues. Throughout the book, 19 contributors share their experiences using the skills described here. The advice is clear and simple, such as this guidance for effective apologies: “An effective apology has three ingredients: authentic expression of regret, genuine reflection of the harm or inconvenience caused, and an offer to make restitution.” The emphasis on fostering diversity and examining the systems in which people work is highly relevant to the modern workplace. The skill names could have used some polish, however—examples such as “Move From the Answer Into the Question” read awkwardly and fail to stick in the mind. In a graphic at the beginning of the book, the authors list all 36 skills, which may be information overload for some. Still, professionals will find many tips worth trying in this book.
A proactive take on relating more effectively at work.Pub Date: July 9, 2024
ISBN: 9781647427085
Page Count: 256
Publisher: She Writes Press
Review Posted Online: March 27, 2024
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
A clearly delineated guide to finally eradicate poverty in America.
A thoughtful program for eradicating poverty from the Pulitzer Prize–winning author of Evicted.
“America’s poverty is not for lack of resources,” writes Desmond. “We lack something else.” That something else is compassion, in part, but it’s also the lack of a social system that insists that everyone pull their weight—and that includes the corporations and wealthy individuals who, the IRS estimates, get away without paying upward of $1 trillion per year. Desmond, who grew up in modest circumstances and suffered poverty in young adulthood, points to the deleterious effects of being poor—among countless others, the precarity of health care and housing (with no meaningful controls on rent), lack of transportation, the constant threat of losing one’s job due to illness, and the need to care for dependent children. It does not help, Desmond adds, that so few working people are represented by unions or that Black Americans, even those who have followed the “three rules” (graduate from high school, get a full-time job, wait until marriage to have children), are far likelier to be poor than their White compatriots. Furthermore, so many full-time jobs are being recast as contracted, fire-at-will gigs, “not a break from the norm as much as an extension of it, a continuation of corporations finding new ways to limit their obligations to workers.” By Desmond’s reckoning, besides amending these conditions, it would not take a miracle to eliminate poverty: about $177 billion, which would help end hunger and homelessness and “make immense headway in driving down the many agonizing correlates of poverty, like violence, sickness, and despair.” These are matters requiring systemic reform, which will in turn require Americans to elect officials who will enact that reform. And all of us, the author urges, must become “poverty abolitionists…refusing to live as unwitting enemies of the poor.” Fortune 500 CEOs won’t like Desmond’s message for rewriting the social contract—which is precisely the point.
A clearly delineated guide to finally eradicate poverty in America.Pub Date: March 21, 2023
ISBN: 9780593239919
Page Count: 288
Publisher: Crown
Review Posted Online: Nov. 30, 2022
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Jan. 1, 2023
BOOK REVIEW
PERSPECTIVES
PERSPECTIVES
SEEN & HEARD
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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