Valuable fact-based (if occasionally verbose) insights on the dynamics of leadership.
Gavoni proposes a behavioral approach to revamping and improving organizational leadership in this nonfiction guide.
Everyone, according to the author, has the potential for leadership; the difference between effective and ineffective leaders comes down to the skills they have learned. Per Gavoni, managers who are always learning and changing their patterns can make real differences, whereas “lazy managers will never become leaders.” Leadership, according to the author, is dynamic and multifaceted; the picture changes, as when zooming in and out with a camera lens. The author outlines a playbook he calls the Four-Term Contingency to develop fundamental leadership principles, organized into the categories of Motivating Operation (“environmental variables that affect the value of a reinforcer or punisher and alter the frequency of behaviors that have been reinforced or punished by those stimuli in the past,” as Gavoni puts it); Antecedent (stage-setting for future plans); Behavior (all of a person’s responses to their environment); and, finally, Consequence (the results that flow from behavior). The pages are well-illustrated with graphs and charts to help readers visualize both the various types of time-wasting clowns they might find in any workplace and the ways that switching between various leadership “hats” can help address such problems. Gavoni’s thoughts on all of these issues are presented in great detail and expressed with an appealing confidence. He’s always thought-provoking when discussing the thinking that underlies different workplace problems, though his prose can sometimes be overly stiff and fussy. “If an employee works overtime to avoid criticism from a manager, the overtime work is negatively reinforced by the removal of the potential negative feedback,” he writes. “In such environments, employees tend to operate with a mindset geared toward avoiding aversive outcomes rather than striving for positive results.” The underlying content is meaty, but readers will often have to wade through excess verbiage to reach it.
Valuable fact-based (if occasionally verbose) insights on the dynamics of leadership.Pub Date: Feb. 2, 2024
ISBN: 9798989798100
Page Count: 289
Publisher: N/A
Review Posted Online: April 4, 2024
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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