An insightful self-helper that guides managers toward self-knowledge and genuine connection with co-workers.
Being a boss requires broad experience, deep empathy, and soul-baring humility, per Murfield’s primer on humanistic management.
The author challenges the characterization of effective leaders as those who possess narrow technical expertise, self-confident judgment, and a drive toward decisive action; instead, he argues, leaders should have eclectic interests (the better to cope with uncertainty and crisis), acknowledge their shortcomings, and empower subordinates rather than giving them orders. His six-part system calls for managers to embrace diversity (he strongly supports DEI initiatives); reject rigid leadership models of top-down control in favor of flexible, collaborative teamwork; commit to lifelong learning; cultivate emotional intelligence by way of “empathy training, conflict resolution workshops, and active listening exercises”; foster team expertise by giving underlings the freedom to act; and “bringing one’s whole self to work,” which entails “aligning personal values with professional actions and fostering authenticity, which inspires trust, connection, and personal fulfillment.” In practice, this last point seems to require trading embarrassing confidences; Murfield established rapport with one troubled underling by confessing to his own case of impostor syndrome. The author illustrates these principles with examples of the actions of famous figures, including Leonardo da Vinci’s manifold artistic and engineering pursuits, Gandhi’s uncompromising moral standard of nonviolent activism, and former Meta executive Sheryl Sandberg’s modeling of a bravely vulnerable style of leadership while heavily pregnant. Murfield also chronicles his own leadership journey, which included a problem with alcohol drinking that derailed his career and got him arrested for drunk driving before he got sober through AA.
Murfield’s treatise articulates a human approach to management; he encourages bosses to quit being bullies and instead become mentors, friends, confidants, and counselors. The research he cites to back his position is sometimes hazy— “Harvard Business Review found that employees who feel safe bringing their whole selves to work are significantly more likely to remain with their organizations long term,” he reports—but it’s an appealing vision. The author grounds his argument in vivid, revealing case studies, like that of the storied 1980 U.S. Olympic hockey team—a marvel of diversity, he contends, that turned away talented players in favor of ones with offbeat skills and temperaments that meshed into a gold medal ensemble. Murfield effectively translates abstract concepts into actionable practices with simple, concrete tips and exercises (“Instead of offering solutions, ask: ‘What do you recommend?’ or ‘What options have we considered?’”) and writes evocatively about the psychological stresses that make the office an emotional pressure-cooker (“I remember the first time I had to lay off a group of employees….I knew the decision was necessary. And still, my body reacted before my mind could catch up—racing heart, tunnel vision, a deep queasiness that wouldn’t settle”). Throughout, he distills his precepts into limpid, aphoristic prose that compresses complex wisdom into pithy soundbites: “Leading Wholly works the same way [as sobriety]. You don’t achieve it. You sustain it, often in ways no one else can see.” Readers longing for a more humane workplace will find much nourishing food for thought here. An insightful self-helper that guides managers toward self-knowledge and genuine connection with co-workers.Pub Date: Sept. 22, 2026
ISBN: 9781646872497
Page Count: 336
Publisher: Ideapress Publishing
Review Posted Online: Sept. 16, 2026
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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