A savvy psycho-communicative guide to finding authentic partnerships at work.
A hands-on approach to finding dignity, meaning, and success in the workplace.
Silver is an independent business and leadership consultant who holds a doctorate in education, and Franz, a former human resources consultant, is an industrial and organizational psychologist at St. John Fisher College. In this collaboration, the authors propose a methodical system to enable transparent, collaborative, and mutually beneficial partnerships between managers and their teams. Dysfunctional workplaces, they write, are plagued by the “Dreaded 4 Ds (dissatisfaction, disengagement, despair, departure),” and the authors present a three-part approach to combat these problems. The first part involves cultivating the correct mindset, one that strives for coordination, coequal responsibility, and mutual accountability. The second part is a model referred to as ERTAP—empathy, respect, trust, alignment, and partnership—which serves to create and maintain the system’s positive effects and workplace satisfaction. Finally, the authors discuss the “Workplace Covenant,” a signed document that delineates obligations and expectations, including personal integrity and regular dialogue; importantly, the document is subject to periodic review. The authors draw on years of research, both their own and that of others, to create a program that can improve “the manager’s leadership, the maturity and self-management of the team, and even the culture of the organization.” Though the book is not designed for a general readership, Silver and Franz write with common sense and empathy, prizing decency over power in order to break down barriers to communication in a hierarchical context. Both managers and employees should experience common support, a sense of appreciation, and viable avenues for success. Some readers may quail at the suggestion to sign their names to a written covenant, but the authors make it feel like putting one’s name to a petition or declaration one believes in—just as they understand it will take time and observation for the process to gain traction with some participants.
A savvy psycho-communicative guide to finding authentic partnerships at work.Pub Date: Aug. 27, 2021
ISBN: 978-1-03-202011-2
Page Count: 160
Publisher: Routledge
Review Posted Online: Sept. 2, 2021
Occasionally wonky but overall a good case for how the dismal science can make the world less—well, dismal.
“Quality of life means more than just consumption”: Two MIT economists urge that a smarter, more politically aware economics be brought to bear on social issues.
It’s no secret, write Banerjee and Duflo (co-authors: Poor Economics: A Radical Rethinking of the Way To Fight Global Poverty, 2011), that “we seem to have fallen on hard times.” Immigration, trade, inequality, and taxation problems present themselves daily, and they seem to be intractable. Economics can be put to use in figuring out these big-issue questions. Data can be adduced, for example, to answer the question of whether immigration tends to suppress wages. The answer: “There is no evidence low-skilled migration to rich countries drives wage and employment down for the natives.” In fact, it opens up opportunities for those natives by freeing them to look for better work. The problem becomes thornier when it comes to the matter of free trade; as the authors observe, “left-behind people live in left-behind places,” which explains why regional poverty descended on Appalachia when so many manufacturing jobs left for China in the age of globalism, leaving behind not just left-behind people but also people ripe for exploitation by nationalist politicians. The authors add, interestingly, that the same thing occurred in parts of Germany, Spain, and Norway that fell victim to the “China shock.” In what they call a “slightly technical aside,” they build a case for addressing trade issues not with trade wars but with consumption taxes: “It makes no sense to ask agricultural workers to lose their jobs just so steelworkers can keep theirs, which is what tariffs accomplish.” Policymakers might want to consider such counsel, especially when it is coupled with the observation that free trade benefits workers in poor countries but punishes workers in rich ones.
Occasionally wonky but overall a good case for how the dismal science can make the world less—well, dismal.Pub Date: Nov. 12, 2019
ISBN: 978-1-61039-950-0
Page Count: 432
Publisher: PublicAffairs
Review Posted Online: Aug. 28, 2019
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Sept. 15, 2019
SEEN & HEARD
Smart, engaging sportswriting—good reading for organization builders as well as Pats fans.
Prolific writer Benedict has long blended two interests—sports and business—and the Patriots are emblematic of both. Founded in 1959 as the Boston Patriots, the team built a strategic home field between that city and Providence. When original owner Billy Sullivan sold the flailing team in 1988, it was $126 million in the hole, a condition so dire that “Sullivan had to beg the NFL to release emergency funds so he could pay his players.” Victor Kiam, the razor magnate, bought the long since renamed New England Patriots, but rival Robert Kraft bought first the parking lots and then the stadium—and “it rankled Kiam that he bore all the risk as the owner of the team but virtually all of the revenue that the team generated went to Kraft.” Check and mate. Kraft finally took over the team in 1994. Kraft inherited coach Bill Parcells, who in turn brought in star quarterback Drew Bledsoe, “the Patriots’ most prized player.” However, as the book’s nimbly constructed opening recounts, in 2001, Bledsoe got smeared in a hit “so violent that players along the Patriots sideline compared the sound of the collision to a car crash.” After that, it was backup Tom Brady’s team. Gridiron nerds will debate whether Brady is the greatest QB and Bill Belichick the greatest coach the game has ever known, but certainly they’ve had their share of controversy. The infamous “Deflategate” incident of 2015 takes up plenty of space in the late pages of the narrative, and depending on how you read between the lines, Brady was either an accomplice or an unwitting beneficiary. Still, as the author writes, by that point Brady “had started in 223 straight regular-season games,” an enviable record on a team that itself has racked up impressive stats.
Smart, engaging sportswriting—good reading for organization builders as well as Pats fans.Pub Date: Sept. 1, 2020
ISBN: 978-1-982134-10-5
Page Count: 592
Publisher: Avid Reader Press
Review Posted Online: Aug. 25, 2020
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Sept. 15, 2020
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