A sometimes technical but ultimately stirring call to sing your own praises in the workplace.
Gillis presents a new game plan for enhancing employees’ value to employers.
At the heart of this book is a process dubbed QTNT (an abbreviation for “quotient”), described by its creator as “pure simplicity” (though it does involve some arithmetic). QTNT employs a tool called the Accomplishments Inventory, which employees at all levels can use to determine their Personal Value Calculation (PVC). This information in hand, they can then “land terrific jobs, pay increases, advancement, and bonuses commensurate with their performance by producing these ‘living’ documents at the appropriate time.” Central to this project is Gillis’ contention that workers can’t rely on other people speaking up for them—they must do it themselves, and they should use QTNT to quantify that act and have the figures ready to hand. “Maintain a professional inventory of your ‘wins,’” Gillis writes. “No matter how large or how small, over time they add up.” Using math in addition to case studies, the author breaks down ways in which employees can map their own activities onto a company’s profits and growth and use PVC to identify their own contributions, all with the goal of strengthening their positions when it comes to seeking advancement in the form of raises or promotions. The appearance of mathematical calculations might be daunting for some readers, but the tone of brisk confidence Gillis uses throughout will convince his audience that self-advocacy is the only kind that actually yields results. (The author bluntly dismisses traditional performance appraisals given by employers: “They don’t work.”) One canny and effective move he makes is to stress to employers that it’s in their own best interests to promote QTNT among their staff. “Let them know this is not a competition,” Gillis writes. “This is about adopting an accomplishment mindset with a potential payout on the other side.”
A sometimes technical but ultimately stirring call to sing your own praises in the workplace.Pub Date: March 11, 2024
ISBN: 9798218392864
Page Count: 150
Publisher: The Really Useful Job Search Company
Review Posted Online: May 14, 2024
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
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
IN THE NEWS
IN THE NEWS
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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