Authoritative leadership lessons in a compact format.
An executive coach and leadership educator highlights “how to achieve leadership through both change and crisis, and how to do it well.”
Baldoni, the author of numerous books on leadership, divides his latest into four tightly constructed parts. Part 1, which looks at how to care for an organization’s people during difficult times, concerns topics that include a definition of important values, such as moral integrity and humility; fostering resilience; “how leaders inspire during a crisis”; and leading with empathy. Readers familiar with the leadership book genre will undoubtedly recognize much of this material, but Baldoni ably packages these and other concepts together in succinct chapters that effectively emphasize key phrases, such as “Resilient leaders manage with redundancy in mind,” and “laughter becomes more than a palliative; it becomes a unifier.” In Part 2, Baldoni offers counsel on leading others during a crisis that’s pragmatic and cleareyed; for example, he advises one to pay attention to probabilities when making decisions and to “Look for solutions that benefit others more than yourself.” A particularly insightful chapter in this part provides an overview of how bias and discrimination, even when unconscious, can have detrimental effects on both leaders and their subordinates. In Part 3, Baldoni makes a solid case for building a strong sense of community in a workplace by, for instance, listening carefully to others before making decisions. Part 4 reprises previous chapters, expanding the content with relevant references to other works as well as several illustrative stories; for instance, Baldoni discusses John F. Kennedy’s book Profiles in Courageand then talks about Kennedy’s own courage. He also shares insights gleaned about resilience from interviews he conducted with 100 people. The book closes with a helpful summary (or “Handbook,” as Baldoni calls it) as well as an actionable self-assessment for “Grace Under Pressure.”
Authoritative leadership lessons in a compact format.Pub Date: April 25, 2023
ISBN: 9781637587560
Page Count: 194
Publisher: Savio Republic
Review Posted Online: March 29, 2023
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
It’s not Shakespeare, not by a long shot. But at least it’s not James Franco.
A noted actor turns to verse: “Poems are a Saturday in the middle of the week.”
McConaughey, author of the gracefully written memoir Greenlights, has been writing poems since his teens, closing with one “written in an Australian bathtub” that reads just as a poem by an 18-year-old (Rimbaud excepted) should read: “Ignorant minds of the fortunate man / Blind of the fate shaping every land.” McConaughey is fearless in his commitment to the rhyme, no matter how slight the result (“Oops, took a quick peek at the sky before I got my glasses, / now I can’t see shit, sure hope this passes”). And, sad to say, the slight is what is most on display throughout, punctuated by some odd koanlike aperçus: “Eating all we can / at the all-we-can-eat buffet, / gives us a 3.8 education / and a 4.2 GPA.” “Never give up your right to do the next right thing. This is how we find our way home.” “Memory never forgets. Even though we do.” The prayer portion of the program is deeply felt, but it’s just as sentimental; only when he writes of life-changing events—a court appearance to file a restraining order against a stalker, his decision to quit smoking weed—do we catch a glimpse of the effortlessly fluent, effortlessly charming McConaughey as exemplified by the David Wooderson (“alright, alright, alright”) of Dazed and Confused. The rest is mostly a soufflé in verse. McConaughey’s heart is very clearly in the right place, but on the whole the book suggests an old saw: Don’t give up your day job.
It’s not Shakespeare, not by a long shot. But at least it’s not James Franco.Pub Date: Sept. 16, 2025
ISBN: 9781984862105
Page Count: 208
Publisher: Crown
Review Posted Online: Aug. 15, 2025
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Sept. 15, 2025
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
SEEN & HEARD
SEEN & HEARD
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
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IN THE NEWS
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