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LEADING LIGHTLY

A well-reasoned guide to forming the mental habits that lead to success.

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A debut manual offers advice on developing leadership through improved ways of thinking.

In this business book, Michael, a financial trader–turned–executive coach, takes readers through the process of improving their leadership skills by reshaping their thought processes. The guide explains that since the only thing individuals can control is their own thoughts and reactions, effective leaders must understand their physical and mental responses to stressors, forge a high level of self-awareness, and make sound decisions from a place of confidence. Michael uses stories from her own career and her coaching clients to demonstrate the concepts discussed in the text, and the anecdotes are often enlightening. The book explains how readers can use techniques borrowed from cognitive behavioral therapy to transform problematic thought processes into more useful ones, allowing them to hold themselves and others accountable, evaluate situations accurately, and make decisions driven by logic rather than pain or fear. Chapters instruct readers in becoming aware of their bodies’ physical and mental reactions, developing control over them, and reframing responses for more productive outcomes, leading to personal satisfaction and professional success. There are portions of the guide that feel like an infomercial with the myriad mentions of Michael’s trademarked training method and its companion app. But the many informative sections that demonstrate the technique without naming it mean that on balance the volume is more an educational tool than a sales pitch, as in this example of how to deal with events outside your control: “Accepting ‘what is’ frees up more of your energy to actually deal with the parts of the situation over which you do have control.” The author is a strong writer and vivid storyteller who does an excellent job of showing how to put the manual’s concepts into practice. Her personal story—she shares details of a somewhat dysfunctional childhood—also serves to demonstrate the usefulness and applicability of the techniques she advocates, making an effective case for the book’s overall argument.

A well-reasoned guide to forming the mental habits that lead to success.

Pub Date: June 28, 2022

ISBN: 978-1-62634-899-8

Page Count: 248

Publisher: Greenleaf Book Group Press

Review Posted Online: May 22, 2022

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  • New York Times Bestseller

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ABUNDANCE

Cogent, well-timed ideas for meeting today’s biggest challenges.

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Helping liberals get out of their own way.

Klein, a New York Times columnist, and Thompson, an Atlantic staffer, lean to the left, but they aren’t interrogating the usual suspects. Aware that many conservatives have no interest in their opinions, the authors target their own side’s “pathologies.” Why do red states greenlight the kind of renewable energy projects that often languish in blue states? Why does liberal California have the nation’s most severe homelessness and housing affordability crises? One big reason: Liberal leadership has ensnared itself in a web of well-intentioned yet often onerous “goals, standards, and rules.” This “procedural kludge,” partially shaped by lawyers who pioneered a “democracy by lawsuit” strategy in the 1960s, threatens to stymie key breakthroughs. Consider the anti-pollution laws passed after World War II. In the decades since, homeowners’ groups in liberal locales have cited such statutes in lawsuits meant to stop new affordable housing. Today, these laws “block the clean energy projects” required to tackle climate change. Nuclear energy is “inarguably safer” than the fossil fuel variety, but because Washington doesn’t always “properly weigh risk,” it almost never builds new reactors. Meanwhile, technologies that may cure disease or slash the carbon footprint of cement production benefit from government support, but too often the grant process “rewards caution and punishes outsider thinking.” The authors call this style of governing “everything-bagel liberalism,” so named because of its many government mandates. Instead, they envision “a politics of abundance” that would remake travel, work, and health. This won’t happen without “changing the processes that make building and inventing so hard.” It’s time, then, to scrutinize everything from municipal zoning regulations to the paperwork requirements for scientists getting federal funding. The authors’ debut as a duo is very smart and eminently useful.

Cogent, well-timed ideas for meeting today’s biggest challenges.

Pub Date: March 18, 2025

ISBN: 9781668023488

Page Count: 320

Publisher: Avid Reader Press

Review Posted Online: Jan. 16, 2025

Kirkus Reviews Issue: Feb. 15, 2025

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THINKING, FAST AND SLOW

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

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