Biblio
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(2004). Fear and Other Uninvited Guests: Tackling the Anxiety, Fear, and Shame That Keep Us from Optimal Living and Loving.
"Blaming is the easiest way to ruin your career. It's surprising how many people blame when it never benefits the blamer. If you observe the best employees or bosses, they don't blame, they just talk about the facts of what happened with another person." (p. 107)
(1990). The Fifth Discipline.
"All too often, teams in business tend to spend their time fighting for turf, avoiding anything that will make them look bad personally, and pretending that everyone is behind the team's collective strategy—maintaining the appearance of a cohesive team. To keep up the image, they seek to squelch disagreement; people with serious reservations avoid stating them publicly, and joint decisions are watered-down compromises reflecting what everyone can live with, or else reflecting one person's view foisted on the group. If there is disagreement, it's usually expressed in a manner that lays blame, polarizes opinion, and fails to reveal the underlying differences in assumptions and experience in a way that the team as a whole could learn."
(1994). The Fifth Discipline Fieldbook.
"People stay with roles that frustrate them because of the dynamics of the structure. Something about their own lives, relationships, or position makes each person 'right' for the part he plays. It all seems so predetermined, yet the factors that create this may, individually, be quite inconsequential. People may even be drawn into the roles which clash with their personalities. Then, horrifyingly, their personalities may change over time to match the role they have been given." (p. 412)
(1989). A Fight to a Better End.
"It's hard to forgive someone who is abusive or spiteful to you. It's even harder to forgive someone who doesn't care whether or not he or she is forgiven." (p. 157)
(1987). Finite and Infinite Games : A Vision of Life as Play and Possibility.
"'Machine' is used here as inclusive of technology and not as an example of it—as a way of drawing attention to the mechanical rationality of technology. We might be surprised by the technological devices that spring from the imagination of gifted inventors and engineers, but there is nothing surprising in the technology itself. The physicist's bomb is as thoroughly mechanical as the Neanderthal's lever—each the exercise of calculable cause-and-effect sequences." (p. 80)
(1997). Firing back: power strategies for cutting the best deal when you're about to lose your job.
"...you may already be convinced that your co-workers, likable and helpful souls as they may have been during good times, are not really part of your protective, extended family. When the bad times came, many of them disappointed you. Either they weren't there for you or they weren't able to solve your problems. If they felt threatened themselves, they were running for cover. Even if they thought they were safe, they were probably showing you a side of themselves you hadn't seen before: a cold, distant, suspicious, or cruel side. But what made you think you were all part of a great big family?" (p. 207)
(1994). First Things First.
"Arnold Toynbee, the great historian, said that all of history can be written in a simple little formula—challenge, response. The challenge is created by the environment, and then the individual, the institution, the society comes up with a response. Then there's another challenge, another response. The formula is constantly being repeated.
The problem is that these responses become codified. They get set in cement. They become a part of the very way we think and the way we perform. They may be good procedures, good practices. But when we're faced with a new challenge the old practices no longer apply. They become obsolete. We're out in the wilderness trying to navigate with a road map." (p. 53)
The problem is that these responses become codified. They get set in cement. They become a part of the very way we think and the way we perform. They may be good procedures, good practices. But when we're faced with a new challenge the old practices no longer apply. They become obsolete. We're out in the wilderness trying to navigate with a road map." (p. 53)
(1999). First, break all the rules: what the world's greatest managers do differently.
"As we shall discuss...the best managers are adept at spotting a glimpse of talent in someone and then repositioning him so he can play to that talent more effectively." (p. 83)
(1990). FLOW: the Psychology of Optimal Experience.
"Each of us has a picture, however vague, of what we would like to accomplish before we die. How close we get to attaining this goal becomes the measure of the quality of our lives. If it remains beyond reach, we grow resentful or resigned; if it is at least in part achieved, we experience a new sense of happiness and satisfaction." (p. 9)
(1990). Force For Change : How Leadership Differs from Management.
"Leadership is different [from management]. Achieving grand visions despite the obstacles always requires an occasional burst of energy, the kind that certain motivational and inspirational processes can provide. Such processes accomplish their energizing effect, not by pushing people in the right direction, as a control mechanism often does, but by satisfying very basic human needs: for achievement, belonging, recognition, self-esteem, a sense of control over one's life, and living up to one's ideals. These processes touch us deeply and powerfully, and elicit a most powerful response." (p. 63)
(1984). Forces of Production.
"For when technological development is seen as politics, as it should be, then the very notion of progress becomes ambiguous: what kind of progress? progress for whom? progress for what? And the awareness of this ambiguity, this indeterminacy, reduces the powerful hold that technology has upon our consciousness and imagination, and it reduces also the hold upon our lives enjoyed by those whose social power has long been concealed and dignified by seemingly technological agendas. Such awareness awakens us not only to the full range of technical possibilities and political potential but also to a broader and older notion of progress, in which the struggle for human fulfillment and social equality replaces a simple faith in technological deliverance, and in which people, with their confidence restored, resume their proper role as subject of the story called history." (preface xiv)
(1983). FORTH fundamentals.
(1991). Frankenstein.
(1990). From Conflict to Resolution: Strategies for Diagnosis and Treatment of Distressed Individuals, Couples, and Families.
"The more an individual has been exposed to no-win situations, the more readily he assumes that other situations cannot be changed for the better. As a consequence, such individuals put out less effort to try to control new conflictual situations." (p. 89)
(1996). Fugitive from the Cubicle Police.
(1990). Full catastrophe living: using the wisdom of your body and mind to face stress, pain, and illness.
"Patience is a form of wisdom. It demonstrates that we understand and accept the fact that sometimes things must unfold in their own time. A child may try to help a butterfly emerge by breaking open its chrysalis. Usually the butterfly doesn't benefit from this. Any adult knows that the butterfly can only emerge in its own time, that the process cannot be hurried." (p. 34)
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