Intriguing stories for business executives looking to deepen their leadership skills.
Good business leadership skills have something in common with forest fires, Christopher Columbus and symphony conductors, according to Stewart (52 Leadership Gems, 2012, etc.).
Fires are beneficial when they clear debris from forests and keep them uncluttered and fresh; Columbus proved the value of not being restricted by old ways of thinking; and a strong symphony conductor brings diverse elements into harmony. These are just a few of the 52 lessons that can be applied to business leadership, as laid out by Stewart, an internationally recognized leadership coach, teacher and lecturer. The stories follow his Lead Now! model, which contains 21 leadership “dimensions.” Each story lists the dimensions to which it relates and summarizes the lesson provided. Each summary is followed by several questions that readers may use to connect the story to their own situations. As with other volumes in Stewart’s Leadership Series, this book is short and its chapters brief, so busy executives don’t have to absorb huge chunks of text in a single sitting. Like parables and fables, the stories all contain deeper meanings, and while some of the tales seem to be right on point, others are a bit of a stretch. A story comparing drug-sniffing dogs to the training of employees may require a few readings to become clear, even with the hints provided, and a story that links a sloth’s behavior to the idea of finding something memorable may cause some readers to scratch their heads. Still, there are far more hits than misses here, and at best, the stories are both interesting and instructive; one story tells of how Kleenex tissue went from being used to treat wounded soldiers in World War I to being a product now used the world over. Such information, like this volume as a whole, is nothing to be sneezed at.
Intriguing stories for business executives looking to deepen their leadership skills.Pub Date: Aug. 17, 2012
ISBN: 978-1930771390
Page Count: 228
Publisher: Leadership Excellence
Review Posted Online: July 3, 2013
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
BOOK REVIEW
An extravaganza in Bemelmans' inimitable vein, but written almost dead pan, with sly, amusing, sometimes biting undertones, breaking through. For Bemelmans was "the man who came to cocktails". And his hostess was Lady Mendl (Elsie de Wolfe), arbiter of American decorating taste over a generation. Lady Mendl was an incredible person,- self-made in proper American tradition on the one hand, for she had been haunted by the poverty of her childhood, and the years of struggle up from its ugliness,- until she became synonymous with the exotic, exquisite, worshipper at beauty's whrine. Bemelmans draws a portrait in extremes, through apt descriptions, through hilarious anecdote, through surprisingly sympathetic and understanding bits of appreciation. The scene shifts from Hollywood to the home she loved the best in Versailles. One meets in passing a vast roster of famous figures of the international and artistic set. And always one feels Bemelmans, slightly offstage, observing, recording, commenting, illustrated.
Pub Date: Feb. 23, 1955
ISBN: 0670717797
Page Count: -
Publisher: Viking
Review Posted Online: Oct. 25, 2011
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Feb. 1, 1955
From the national correspondent for PBS's MacNeil-Lehrer Newshour: a moving memoir of her youth in the Deep South and her role in desegregating the Univ. of Georgia. The eldest daughter of an army chaplain, Hunter-Gault was born in what she calls the ``first of many places that I would call `my place' ''—the small village of Due West, tucked away in a remote little corner of South Carolina. While her father served in Korea, Hunter-Gault and her mother moved first to Covington, Georgia, and then to Atlanta. In ``L.A.'' (lovely Atlanta), surrounded by her loving family and a close-knit black community, the author enjoyed a happy childhood participating in activities at church and at school, where her intellectual and leadership abilities soon were noticed by both faculty and peers. In high school, Hunter-Gault found herself studying the ``comic-strip character Brenda Starr as I might have studied a journalism textbook, had there been one.'' Determined to be a journalist, she applied to several colleges—all outside of Georgia, for ``to discourage the possibility that a black student would even think of applying to one of those white schools, the state provided money for black students'' to study out of state. Accepted at Michigan's Wayne State, the author was encouraged by local civil-rights leaders to apply, along with another classmate, to the Univ. of Georgia as well. Her application became a test of changing racial attitudes, as well as of the growing strength of the civil-rights movement in the South, and Gault became a national figure as she braved an onslaught of hostilities and harassment to become the first black woman to attend the university. A remarkably generous, fair-minded account of overcoming some of the biggest, and most intractable, obstacles ever deployed by southern racists. (Photographs—not seen.)
Pub Date: Nov. 1, 1992
ISBN: 0-374-17563-2
Page Count: 192
Publisher: Farrar, Straus and Giroux
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Sept. 1, 1992
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