A straightforward and often powerful self-help book.
Consultant Fredricks, author of The Ask: For Business, For Philanthropy, For Everyday Living (2017), aims to show readers how to ask tough questions and receive satisfying answers.
This compact self-help book may be brief, but it’s bursting with hard truths, sage advice, and learned examples. In a forthright introduction, Fredricks promises to aid readers in the process of asking difficult queries of others and turning “those nos and maybes into yeses, yeses, and yeses.” She notes that the power to ask questions is one of the earliest powers that a human being has—think of a child and their candid, unfiltered curiosity. But past unpleasant experiences and the fear of rejection frequently stop adults from asking for things that they believe are “hard,” such as time, respect, money, and even love. In a clear, succinct manner, Fredricks offers advice in a compelling, digestible form, including scenarios from her own life and work, bullet points, tables, and takeaways that summarize each chapter. After taking a quiz to discover what sort of “asker” they are (“The Negotiator,” “The Empathizer,” “The Presenter,” or “The Charmer”), the reader is thrust into a world of confidence and poise—and a world of many rules, which offers a very direct approach. After learning “the three rules of asking” (“Be Prepared, Be Personal, and Be Present”) and “Laura’s Five Laws of Asking” (from “Know exactly what you want, with numbers and dates” to “Plan your next move at the end of the ask”) the reader will emerge with an in-depth understanding of the ins and outs of a big ask. Fredricks excels in approaching her readers with an understanding tone and practical tips that are applicable to a wide range of people’s lives. Whether one is a chief executive, like the author, or a student, an employee or an employer, an introvert or an extrovert, one will come away from the book with ways to tackle problems with the same confidence as a kid asking a question.
A straightforward and often powerful self-help book.Pub Date: June 13, 2023
ISBN: 9781642257076
Page Count: 160
Publisher: Advantage Media Group
Review Posted Online: May 3, 2023
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
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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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