An enlightening, smart personal development primer.
An executive coach urges business leaders to develop better self-awareness, providing case studies, exercises, and more in this self-help guide.
A human resources consultant who has spent more than 3,000 hours coaching executives, Metheny (Solution-Focused Leadership: Coaching Employees to Generate Solutions, 2014) notes that business leaders’ lack of self-awareness is often a “disaster waiting to happen.” He provides an overview of research studies regarding the importance of this quality in business, touching on several helpful organizational psychology evaluation/assessment tools. He shares many of his own stories as well as those of his clients (first names only) who have effectively dealt with career challenges by becoming more aware of “default settings,” or unconscious thoughts, behaviors, and values. For example, one of Metheny’s clients was often frustrated with his team but then realized he had unconscious “rules,” including that everyone should pitch in during a work crunch. Once this leader articulated his rules, everyone was less stressed and performed more effectively. To help others with this critical personal development work, Metheny suggests an array of mindfulness exercises, including how to recognize and thus re-evaluate one’s “default stories” and conduct morning and evening check-ins with oneself. He stresses the importance of soliciting regular feedback (preferably on a quarterly basis and from a range of people) and of adopting the perspective of “neutral thinking,” i.e., not to be self-critical but instead be open to the “complex symphony” of the ongoing journey of self-knowledge. While the subject of this book is certainly not news, Metheny has created an engaging narrative that, particularly in the context of his own personal revelations, demonstrates the power of enhanced self-awareness in and of itself. His examples from his client base, as well as his own life, are relevant and relatable, with some nifty road-tested ideas (such as one exec’s personal “Stupid Box” used to record and store complaints, which curbed his career-damaging outbursts at others). While Metheny sometimes circles the same points, his book is on the whole a wonderful guide to improving mindfulness in business and overall life.
Pub Date: N/A
ISBN: N/A
Page Count: -
Publisher: Dog Ear Publisher
Review Posted Online: Nov. 21, 2015
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Jan. 1, 2016
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
Unsentimental nature writing that sheds as much light on humans as on eels.
An account of the mysterious life of eels that also serves as a meditation on consciousness, faith, time, light and darkness, and life and death.
In addition to an intriguing natural history, Swedish journalist Svensson includes a highly personal account of his relationship with his father. The author alternates eel-focused chapters with those about his father, a man obsessed with fishing for this elusive creature. “I can’t recall us ever talking about anything other than eels and how to best catch them, down there by the stream,” he writes. “I can’t remember us speaking at all….Because we were in…a place whose nature was best enjoyed in silence.” Throughout, Svensson, whose beat is not biology but art and culture, fills his account with people: Aristotle, who thought eels emerged live from mud, “like a slithering, enigmatic miracle”; Freud, who as a teenage biologist spent months in Trieste, Italy, peering through a microscope searching vainly for eel testes; Johannes Schmidt, who for two decades tracked thousands of eels, looking for their breeding grounds. After recounting the details of the eel life cycle, the author turns to the eel in literature—e.g., in the Bible, Rachel Carson’s Under the Sea Wind, and Günter Grass’ The Tin Drum—and history. He notes that the Puritans would likely not have survived without eels, and he explores Sweden’s “eel coast” (what it once was and how it has changed), how eel fishing became embroiled in the Northern Irish conflict, and the importance of eel fishing to the Basque separatist movement. The apparent return to life of a dead eel leads Svensson to a consideration of faith and the inherent message of miracles. He warns that if we are to save this fascinating creature from extinction, we must continue to study it. His book is a highly readable place to begin learning.
Unsentimental nature writing that sheds as much light on humans as on eels.Pub Date: May 5, 2020
ISBN: 978-0-06-296881-4
Page Count: 256
Publisher: Ecco/HarperCollins
Review Posted Online: Feb. 29, 2020
Kirkus Reviews Issue: March 15, 2020
A superb book about doing his job by a master of his craft.
The renowned writer offers advice on information-gathering and nonfiction composition.
The book consists of eight instructive and charming essays about creating narratives, all of them originally composed for the New Yorker, where McPhee (Silk Parachute, 2010, etc.) has been a contributor since the mid-1960s. Reading them consecutively in one volume constitutes a master class in writing, as the author clearly demonstrates why he has taught so successfully part-time for decades at Princeton University. In one of the essays, McPhee focuses on the personalities and skills of editors and publishers for whom he has worked, and his descriptions of those men and women are insightful and delightful. The main personality throughout the collection, though, is McPhee himself. He is frequently self-deprecating, occasionally openly proud of his accomplishments, and never boring. In his magazine articles and the books resulting from them, McPhee rarely injects himself except superficially. Within these essays, he offers a departure by revealing quite a bit about his journalism, his teaching life, and daughters, two of whom write professionally. Throughout the collection, there emerge passages of sly, subtle humor, a quality often absent in McPhee’s lengthy magazine pieces. Since some subjects are so weighty—especially those dealing with geology—the writing can seem dry. There is no dry prose here, however. Almost every sentence sparkles, with wordplay evident throughout. Another bonus is the detailed explanation of how McPhee decided to tackle certain topics and then how he chose to structure the resulting pieces. Readers already familiar with the author’s masterpieces—e.g., Levels of the Game, Encounters with the Archdruid, Looking for a Ship, Uncommon Carriers, Oranges, and Coming into the Country—will feel especially fulfilled by McPhee’s discussions of the specifics from his many books.
A superb book about doing his job by a master of his craft.Pub Date: Sept. 5, 2017
ISBN: 978-0-374-14274-2
Page Count: 208
Publisher: Farrar, Straus and Giroux
Review Posted Online: May 8, 2017
Kirkus Reviews Issue: June 1, 2017
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