So many leadership books out there, so little time to read them.
Here’s a look at recent and fairly recent titles on the market — three I’d recommend for newsroom leaders, and one you can skip.
THE WINNERS:
Primal Leadership
Daniel Goleman, Richard Boyatzis, Annie McKee
HBS Press, 2002
Today, more than ever, newsroom leaders need to understand the interpersonal side of management. This very readable book makes a scientific and business case for the importance of emotionally intelligent leaders, who are in touch with and in control of the emotions that drive them. According to the authors:
“Roughly 50 to 70 percent of how employees perceive their organization’s climate can be traced to the actions of one person: the leader. More than anyone else, the boss creates the conditions that directly determine people’s ability to work well.”
We know from our leadership seminars at Poynter that many news leaders need help managing anger and frustration so they can coach rather than intimidate. This book will help them understand how their negative attitudes, moods, and language can undercut their own effectiveness as well as the performance of journalists who report to them.
Good Work
When Excellence and Ethics Meet
Howard Gardner, Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi, William Damon
Basic Books, 2001
Read “Primal Leadership” before you read “Good Work.” You’ll need emotional resilience to handle this analysis of the current mindset of journalists. The authors, all psychologists, did extensive research into two fields: genetics and journalism. They sought to identify what motivated and moved practitioners of each field.
They found the geneticists to be excited and upbeat about their profession, its current practice, and its promise for the future. Journalists, however, reported:
“…they are working at a time when their profession is wracked by confusion and doubt…”
It is fascinating to explore the current state of journalism’s practitioners through the eyes of outside researchers, and to take in their advice for bringing journalists, their managers, their corporate owners, and the public back into what they call “alignment.” While the book offers no road map toward a definitive solution for today’s practitioners, it reinforces the need for high journalistic standards and defines its best practices.
Trust in the Balance
Robert Bruce Shaw
Jossey-Bass, 1997
I collect books on trust in the workplace, believing trust to be of paramount importance in newsroom cultures. Why? Journalists — good ones — question authority and resist spin. Imagine, then, how challenging it is for leaders to reach them without building an extraordinary foundation of trust. Imagine how much more difficult it is today to build trust in a “do more with less” newsroom environment.
This book, elegant in its simplicity, can help both leaders and followers. It lays out a formula for determining the levels of trust in the workplace culture and among colleagues. That formula is based on performance (getting results), integrity (walking your talk), and demonstrating genuine concern for others. I’ve used this book as reference in my management teaching. Although it was written for business leaders in general, I find it resonates with journalists.
THE CLINKER:
The Contrarian’s Guide to Leadership
Steven B. Sample-Jossey-Bass, 2002
The title’s intriguing. The author is the successful president of the University of California. Warren Bennis wrote the laudatory foreword. It all sounds good until Sample offers some thoughts on journalism, early in the book. He writes:
“…a leader can miss a day or week or even several months of the daily newspapers and be none the worse for it, and in some cases even be the better for it.”
He paints the news media as essential to a democracy, but flawed, biased, and of little consequence to leaders. After reading that, I took guilty pleasure in catching the author in acts of bad reporting. He writes:
“I recall hearing a story (possibly apocryphal) about Secretary of Defense Robert MacNamara (sic)…”
He then recounts the negative story about McNamara (correct spelling) without making any attempt to verify the truth of it. At another point, he incorrectly attributes the Serenity Prayer (“God, grant me the serenity to accept…”) to St. Francis of Assisi. The prayer, associated with Alcoholics Anonymous, is generally attributed to a Reinhold Niebuhr sermon, though Niebuhr and others suggest the prayer and variations of it may have existed earlier.
Though I’ve read positive reviews of this book, I’ll take the contrarian view. Save your money and your blood pressure. This book of anecdotes and personal opinion is simply not a need-to-read for newsroom leaders.
