A detailed, helpful, and well-written guide to developing and sustaining cross-cultural partnerships.
A manual focuses on making successful professional connections in the Arab world.
In this book, Hornok draws on a long experience working in Arab countries to counsel readers on the most effective ways to deal with businesses in the region. The guide begins with a psychological approach to establishing interpersonal connections, urging readers from other cultures to understand their own mindsets and enter into interactions from an open and nonjudgmental perspective. (Problematic emotions are personified throughout the volume; examples of what Hornok calls “Emotional Hinderers”—“Relentless Judgment,” “Aggressive Inner Critic,” and “Incensed Anger Rascal,” among others—appear in several places, occasionally accompanied by Sung’s illustrations.) The author explores the role of small talk, the importance of family loyalty and bonds, and methods of coming to agreement, with numerous examples provided for each topic. Hornok also addresses cultural taboos and the appropriate use of humor in business settings. Anecdotes from international and Arab businesspeople—some named and some anonymous, with each speaker identified by country of origin and industry—make up much of the narrative. They serve as inspiration for the author’s methodical and persuasive analysis of what was done right and wrong in each situation as well as how the underlying principles of these specific incidents can be more broadly applied. The volume also encourages readers to adopt key strategies like the “From Inside to Outside technique” (fostering a “positive inner attitude”) and “the Gas-Shift-Brake technique” (calculating how much pressure to exert and when to pull back) in their interactions, with Hornok making frequent mention of the concepts throughout the work. Taken together, the book’s elements offer a step-by-step guide to establishing the relationships that make business transactions succeed.
From the manual’s opening pages, the author presents a convincing case for developing cross-cultural understanding as a crucial business skill and a minimum qualification for working internationally. Readers will not be left wondering about the value of the volume’s advice, as the anecdotes provide many stories of deals and sales achieved through understanding local norms and methods. Overgeneralization is always a risk in books that attribute traits to an entire region or culture, but Hornok does much to mitigate this by including a wide range of first-person accounts from Arab professionals throughout the region (“The personal relationship is equally as important as the business relationship itself,” an Omani reports), demonstrating that the values dissected in these pages are more shared reality than stereotype. The “Emotional Hinderers,” which are further discussed in an appendix, can feel overused, especially when Hornok encourages readers to address them directly (“So, dear ‘Relentless Judgment,’ I’m asking you, politely, to relax”). But the anthropomorphizing of emotions detracts little from the volume’s overall effectiveness. The author is knowledgeable about the realities of working in Arab countries and does a good job of transmitting that expertise in an authoritative and straightforward way, acknowledging cultural differences without making value judgments. The section examining small talk as an essential feature of business conversations is particularly well done, showing how extensive preparations for minor discussions can deliver substantial results. On the whole, the book is comprehensive, well organized, and skillfully crafted, a useful tool for Westerners looking to attain a professional win in a different part of the world.
A detailed, helpful, and well-written guide to developing and sustaining cross-cultural partnerships.Pub Date: March 3, 2020
ISBN: 978-0-367-26502-1
Page Count: 226
Publisher: Routledge
Review Posted Online: May 15, 2020
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
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A passionate and accessible guide to humanizing the workplace.
Helbig and Norman present a game plan for making leadership more responsively human.
In this expanded update to The Psychological Safety Playbook: Lead More Powerfully by Being More Human (2023), the authors provide “practical strategies for responding to resistance, sparking change, embodying the change we want to see, and moving forward deliberately,” specifically in a business setting. They suggest ways to encourage what they call “changemakers” through the use of five key “plays” from their playbook: Communicate Courageously, Master the Art of Listening, Manage Your Reactions (“shift from automatic reaction to conscious response to stay better connected to yourself and others”), Embrace Risk and Failure, and Design Inclusive Rituals. The goal is to ensure that organizational cultures promote psychological safety, guided by leaders who “walk the talk” by emphasizing their own humanity at every turn. (“We must be the first to share our own failures with our teams, which will start to make it possible for others to do the same.”) This call for example-setting is sounded throughout the book as Helbig and Norman urge their target audience (leaders and would-be leaders) to go beyond mere instruction and instead embody the qualities they want to see in their subordinates, such as continuous learning, active curiosity, and self-reflection. Each chapter includes a detailed “Recommended Reading” section and text with extensive numbered and bulleted points formatted to make the core concepts more immediately digestible. The authors effectively employ clear and empathetic prose to assure readers that psychological safety is slow to build and quick to break, observing that such safety requires steady attention and delivers outsize payoffs as a result. They refreshingly ground a great deal of the material in psychology and neuroscience, pointing out, for instance, that research has demonstrated that the parasympathetic nervous system responds to honest appreciation, which improves creative thinking. Some wistful readers might consider some of the authors’ suggestions beyond the reach of their own organizations, as when group facilitators are advised to “gently intervene when someone dominates the conversation,” but hope springs eternal.
A passionate and accessible guide to humanizing the workplace.Pub Date: May 19, 2026
ISBN: 9798993550503
Page Count: 170
Publisher: Crazy Idea Press
Review Posted Online: April 23, 2026
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
BOOK REVIEW
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