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10 of 11 people found the following review helpful:
4.0 out of 5 stars
Truth and Trust, the shaping tools of the Leaders-followers Link, May 31, 2008
This review is from: Transparency: How Leaders Create a Culture of Candor (J-B Warren Bennis Series) (Hardcover)
This book takes on the difficult task of explaining the links between the reality- truth of a situation, cohesiveness of a group to accept truth, the abilities of leadership to embrace candor, and the perceptions of followers to create a culture of trust. A well researched book and a good read for indicating how the culture of being open in a group must be created and maintained. After all, trust and truth are the building tools in any relationship.
To that aim, the writers attempt to explain how in a mini-second that a conflict of differing views arises either from within or outside the leader-follower structure, must be dealt with promptly. It outlines as a test of leadership why and how certain strategies and tools should be considered. Lying, denying to confessing are some options leaders have used in the past. But how should one as a leader deal with the unvarnished truth is the question? Above all, the emotional feeling of trust must be maintained or the leader-follower relationship is damaged.
This book gives examples how leaders (in business, and in government) need to create a culture of candor amongst their followers. The old saw that good and honest managers are the last to know when there is a serious problem, is regrettably too accurate. Yet, the bad managers or deniers of the truth are the first to know as they often created the problem. When humans make an error, the key personal questions of ethics and integrity facing all members in a group are... should they tell others about it or cover it up? Why should they?... as generally there are no emotional or financial guerdons in telling the truth. Unfortunately most culture in organizations allow the creators of a problem either to deny it existence or to downplay its importance. Few humans have the abilities or courage to openly admit to making errors and that is the rub. Thus, an organization must design such fail safe system.
In the final analyis, this book is about leadership and controlling one's emotions within a group. Foremost,as a preventer to open and trusting group collaboration,it is the negative emotional reactions of leaders when they encounter criticism. First, most leaders' egoes do not allow them to easily embrace an unflattering truth or admit to an error in judgement. Also many view candor as expression of the disloyal. Strange as research indicates that followers of fallen leaders will trust them again if the leader admits freely that there was an error in judgement. One of the behaviors that create intergroup conflicts is how leaders often indicate by words and action over time that loyalty at any price is better than a grain of truth.
Second, in most cases,there is an emotional tendency for leaders to view messengers carrying such truth as foes and to negatively over-react when hearing any bad news. Thereby creating interpersonal conflict of either rage, fear, anger, delusion, expressed in an emotional list of reactions (Is he/she one of us or one of them? What is he trying to say now? Can't they keep their mouth shut?)- followed by a destructive behavior of concealment. These are uniquely human traits that leaders must learn to control I discovered in my years doing applied management research as a consultant and teaching leadership as a professor of organizational psychology. This book attempts to deal with those human traits and is highly recommended, just for that reason alone.Dr. Errol D. Alexander
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5 of 5 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
"Technologies change. Human nature doesn't.", June 24, 2008
This review is from: Transparency: How Leaders Create a Culture of Candor (J-B Warren Bennis Series) (Hardcover)
Warren Bennis, Daniel Goleman, and James O'Toole are three of the most influential business thinkers in recent years and, with Patricia Ward Biederman, collaborated on this book that consists of three separate but related essays: "Creating a Culture of Candor" (Bennis, Goleman, and Biederman examine transparency with and between organizations), "Speaking Truth to Power" (O'Toole shares his perspectives on transparency in terms of personal responsibility), and "The New Transparency" (Bennis explains how digital technology is making the entire world transparent). According to Thomas Friedman, the world has become flat as a result of forces that "are empowering more and more individuals today to reach farther, faster, deeper, and cheaper than ever before, and that is equalizing power - and equalizing opportunity, by giving so many more people the tools to connect, compete, and collaborate." Bennis, Goleman, O'Toole and Biederman agree. The first essay suggests how the same "flattening forces" to which Friedman refers also have a profound impact on relationships between and among organizations throughout the world. In the second essay, O'Toole eloquently as well as convincingly stresses the importance of responsibility and (yes) accountability of everyone who is involved in those relationships. Then in the third essay, Bennis shares his insights concerning the most significant consequences of technology, given the fact that "leaders are losing their monopoly on power, and this has positive impacts - notably the democratization of power - as well as some negative ones."
In the Preface, Bennis notes that this book really isn't about technology. "It is about the things that have mattered since the new technology was the flint and the longbow - courage, integrity, candor, responsibility. Technologies change. Human nature doesn't." That is the core concept in O'Toole's essay and wholly consistent with the core concepts in his previously published books, notably The Executive's Compass, Leading Change, and Creating the Good Life. I agree with him that "speaking to power is, perhaps, the oldest of all ethical challenges." He briefly discusses several plays (Sophocles' Antigone, John Osborne's Luther, and Robert Bolt's A Man for All Seasons) who protagonist offers a reminder to leaders in our own time of the responsibility to create a transparent "culture of candor." O'Toole also cites FedEx, the Cowles Media Corporation, GM, and Motorola as examples of organizations that do -- or do not -- have such a culture, those whose leaders are - or are not -- "constantly willing to rethink their most basic assumptions through a process of constructive dissent...about such often-taboo subjects as the nature of working conditions they offer employees, the purposes of their corporation, and their responsibilities to various stakeholders." Whatever the size and nature of an organization may be, O'Toole insists, it must be one "one in which every employee is empowered to speak the truth." Trust must be the essential ingredient to its effectiveness [and is] the most elusive and fragile aspect of leadership" because it is so difficult to earn but so easy to lose and, once lost, nearly impossible to regain.
I highly recommend this book to those in senior-level executive positions as well as to others whose ambition is to ascend to that level. Speaking directly to the reader of this review, I urge you do everything you can to help establish and then support a transparent culture of candor. If you find yourself in one in which you cannot "speak to power" despite your best efforts, seek another culture in which you can. Meanwhile, keep in mind that Dante reserved the last and worst ring in hell for those who, in a moral crisis, preserved their neutrality.
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17 of 22 people found the following review helpful:
1.0 out of 5 stars
A disappointing book of little value, June 16, 2009
This review is from: Transparency: How Leaders Create a Culture of Candor (J-B Warren Bennis Series) (Hardcover)
I am rarely disappointed with a book as much as I was with Transparency: How Leaders Create a Culture of Candor. This short book is a series of three essays that might be well described as philosophical meanderings about the virtues of being truthful, honest, and open in dealing with others. It offers little in the way of insight, and even less in terms of wisdom. We learn, for example, how the internet makes it more difficult for governments, as well as political and business leaders to keep secrets (!). The book also has a heavy political bias, which is neither informative nor persuasive.
For example, readers are given numerous examples of how republicans are not open and forthright in their dealings with the public, but democrats generally are honest and reliable. Oh, please! Such is the extent of the authors' scholarly work. For example, readers are treated to a story about how the Board of Directors of Hollinger International spent $8 million to purchase papers relating to Franklin D. Roosevelt; this was indeed a very questionable transaction of dubious value to Hollinger's shareholders. But only one board member is identified by the author, and is singled out for his failures: Henry Kissinger, a stalwart Republican.
Other examples of political bias abound: Ronald Reagan, George Bush, and Donald Rumsfeld are also harshly criticized in the first essay, along with Henry Kissinger and the CIA, while Bill Clinton is praised for his open leadership style. The source notes in the back of the book are also somewhat revealing. The most frequently cited source is The New York Times, not exactly a bastion of conservative thinking.
While the book's political bias greatly dilutes it message as well as its credibility, the biggest problem with this book is that is has so little message in the first place. In addition, the overall tenor of the book is very negative - there is little discussion from an upbeat, positive vantage point about creating a culture of candor (in spite of the book's title), and much more in the way of bemoaning the lack of candor throughout the world. This makes the book rather tiresome, and a bit of a downer to read.
Ironically, this book fails to live up to its own premise of transparency. It is so loaded with political bias that the authors appear fundamentally incapable is seeing their own lack of objectivity. But what I find most disappointing of all is simply that the book offers the reader no insightful, useful, or practical advice of any significance. Readers looking for a good foundation on transparency would be far better off reading All I Really Need to Know I Learned in Kindergarten, by Robert Fulghum.
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