Reflections on Character and Leadership
Reflections on Character and Leadership

Author: Manfred F. R. Kets de Vries

Publisher: John Wiley & Sons

Published: 2010-04-09

Total Pages: 428

ISBN-13: 0470687657

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Reflections on Character and Leadership is the first of the three books in the Manfred kets de Vries on the Couch series. Here, Kets de Vries looks at entrepreneurship, the pathology of leadership, and the personality of the leader. The reader will visit the disturbed inner worlds of leaders like Alexander the Great, Shaka Zulu and Robert Maxwell, discover how to distinguish between a cold fish and a live volcano, and identify impostors, despots, organizational fools and global leaders. The book highlights the basic principles of the clinical paradigm—the process of putting organizations and the individuals who lead them on the psychoanalyst’s couch. It includes studies of personality archetypes and the effects they have on organizational life and culture—and the effects that organizations have on them. Referring frequently to key management concepts, Kets de Vries looks not only at what happens when things go wrong, but also at how to create the psychological and organizational space to make sure that things go right. About the series: The series offers an overview of Kets de Vries’s work spanning four decades, a period in which he has established himself as the leading figure in the clinical study of organizational leadership. The books in this series contain a representative selection of Kets de Vries’ writings about leadership from a wide variety of published sources and cover character and leadership in a global context, career development and leadership in organizations. The original essays were all written or published between 1976 and 2008. Updated where appropriate and revised by the author, they present a digest of the work of one of the most influential management thinkers of the present day.

Trump on the Couch
Trump on the Couch

Author: Justin A. Frank, MD

Publisher: Penguin

Published: 2018-09-25

Total Pages: 306

ISBN-13: 0735220328

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"A great public service--critical for our time." --Bandy X. Lee, M.D., M.Div., Yale psychiatrist, expert on violence, and editor of The Dangerous Case of Donald Trump The New York Times-bestselling author of Bush on the Couch shows that Donald Trump is mentally and emotionally unfit to execute the duties of President. No president in the history of the United States has inspired more alarm and confusion than Donald Trump. As questions and concerns about his decisions, behavior, and qualifications for office have multiplied, they point to one primary question: Does he pose a genuine threat to our country? The American Psychiatric Association's Goldwater Rule constrains psychiatrists from offering diagnoses on public figures who are not patients and who have not endorsed such statements. But in Trump on the Couch Clinical Professor of Psychiatry Justin A Frank invokes the moral responsibility that compels him to speak out and present a full portrait of a man who presents us with a clear and present danger. Using observations gained from a close study of Trump's patterns of thought, action, and communication, Dr. Frank uncovers a personality riddled with mental health issues. His analysis is filled with important revelations about our nation's leader, including disturbing insights into his childhood, his family, his business dealings, and his unusual relationship with alternative facts, including how The absence of a strong maternal force during childhood has led to Trump's remarkable lack of empathy and disregard for women's boundaries; His compulsion to polarize America has grown out of the way he perceives the world as full of deceitful and destructive persecutors; His inability to tolerate the pain of frustration has triggered his belief that omnipotence will finally remove it; His idiosyncratic use of language points to larger issues than even his tweets might suggest. With our country itself at stake, Dr. Frank calls attention to the underlying narcissism, misogyny, deception, and racism that drive the President who endangers it. A penetrating examination of how we as a nation got here and, more important, where we are going, Trump on the Couch sounds a call to action that we cannot ignore.

Church on the Couch
Church on the Couch

Author: Elaine Martens Hamilton

Publisher: Zondervan

Published: 2008-12-22

Total Pages: 178

ISBN-13: 0310283914

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Here is practical guidance for church leaders who desire to free their people from the grip of inauthenticity, which hinders spiritual and emotional growth and maturity. It is a challenge to live differently by telling the truth about who you are, and to provide opportunities for others to do the same.

On the Couch
On the Couch

Author: Nathan Kravis

Publisher: National Geographic Books

Published: 2017-09-01

Total Pages: 0

ISBN-13: 0262036614

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How the couch became an icon of self-knowledge and self-reflection as well as a site for pleasure, transgression, and healing. The peculiar arrangement of the psychoanalyst's office for an analytic session seems inexplicable. The analyst sits in a chair out of sight while the patient lies on a couch facing away. It has been this way since Freud, although, as Nathan Kravis points out in On the Couch, this practice is grounded more in the cultural history of reclining posture than in empirical research. Kravis, himself a practicing psychoanalyst, shows that the tradition of recumbent speech wasn't dreamed up by Freud but can be traced back to ancient Greece, where guests reclined on couches at the symposion (a gathering for upper-class males to discuss philosophy and drink wine), and to the Roman convivium (a banquet at which men and women reclined together). From bed to bench to settee to chaise-longue to sofa: Kravis tells how the couch became an icon of self-knowledge and self-reflection as well as a site for pleasure, privacy, transgression, and healing. Kravis draws on sources that range from ancient funerary monuments to furniture history to early photography, as well as histories of medicine, fashion, and interior decoration, and he deploys an astonishing array of images—of paintings, monuments, sculpture, photographs, illustrations, New Yorker cartoons, and advertisements. Kravis deftly shows that, despite the ambivalence of today's psychoanalysts—some of whom regard it as “infantilizing”—the couch continues to be the emblem of a narrative of self-discovery. Recumbent speech represents the affirmation in the presence of another of having a mind of one's own.

Obama on the Couch
Obama on the Couch

Author: Justin A. Frank

Publisher: Simon and Schuster

Published: 2012-05

Total Pages: 290

ISBN-13: 1451620640

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Analyzes Barack Obama's behavior to explain the apparent disconnect between his campaign promises and presidential choices, drawing on factors from his past to illuminate the role of unconscious thoughts on the administration of his policies.

The Leader on the Couch
The Leader on the Couch

Author: Manfred F. R. Kets de Vries

Publisher: John Wiley & Sons

Published: 2006-09-22

Total Pages: 453

ISBN-13: 0470030798

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Despite the proven benefits of emotional intelligence, organizational life has typically been hostile to the inner world of feeling. Rationality is deemed superior to feeling, which can contaminate judgment. But without feeling there is no passion, and no action. This book sets out to change people and organizations for the better, by revealing the 'dark side' of leadership behaviour and its impact on performance. Tapping into the startling parallels between the journey to emotional intelligence, the process of psychoanalysis, the practice of leadership coaching and the Zen journey to enlightenment, renowned thinker Manfred Kets de Vries helps executives, consultants, and coaches to peel back the layers of self-deception and reveal how inner personality – largely hard-wired since early childhood – affects the way they lead and manage others.

Lying On The Couch
Lying On The Couch

Author: Irvin D. Yalom

Publisher: Basic Books

Published: 2014-03-25

Total Pages: 379

ISBN-13: 0465062970

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From the bestselling author of Love's Executioner and When Nietzsche Wept comes a provocative exploration of the unusual relationships three therapists form with their patients. Seymour is a therapist of the old school who blurs the boundary of sexual propriety with one of his clients. Marshal, who is haunted by his own obsessive-compulsive behaviors, is troubled by the role money plays in his dealings with his patients. Finally, there is Ernest Lash. Driven by his sincere desire to help and his faith in psychoanalysis, he invents a radically new approach to therapy -- a totally open and honest relationship with a patient that threatens to have devastating results. Exposing the many lies that are told on and off the psychoanalyst's couch, Lying on the Couch gives readers a tantalizing, almost illicit, glimpse at what their therapists might really be thinking during their sessions. Fascinating, engrossing and relentlessly intelligent, it ultimately moves readers with a denouement of surprising humanity and redemptive faith.

Strategy-Driven Leadership
Strategy-Driven Leadership

Author: Michael A. Couch

Publisher: CRC Press

Published: 2019-10-14

Total Pages: 184

ISBN-13: 1000727874

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It’s estimated that U.S. companies spend over $14 billion annually on leadership development --Match that number to the abundant and growing research that finds most leadership development to be ineffective, and the conclusion is a phenomenal amount of waste. The remedy for this situation is to have business strategy drive leadership development instead of creating programs that match a one-size-fits-all approach to leadership. This book's approach, called Strategy-Driven Leadership Development (SDLD), puts business strategy first. It maintains an emphasis on building leadership programs around what it will take to make the business successful as opposed to implementing a program in the hopes that it will benefit the strategy. The result is a differentiated and targeted approach called Intentional Leadership Development, which provides the structure for transforming how leadership development is undertaken. At the heart of this book, however, is the explanation of how small, incremental changes in action and perspective create meaningful changes in the way leadership is developed. The focus is on the leadership behaviors associated with success for any company. Some companies may need leaders with better financial acumen while others may require better teamwork for success. These skills are learnable and when the energy of an organization is behind it, then leadership development can be transformational. The authors method "retools" prior leadership efforts – the emphasis is not on previous failures and restarting with new programs. There are many effective ideas and actions that are currently embedded in leadership programs, but they miss the critical element of tying their efforts to the business strategy. Strategy-Driven Leadership changes the way organizations think about and drive their leadership talent initiatives among their current and upcoming leaders. The book is filled with research, science-based information, case studies, and practical hands-on tools on why and how this Strategy-Driven Leadership Development model will transform company leadership approaches.

Chosen Soldier
Chosen Soldier

Author: Dick Couch

Publisher: Crown

Published: 2008-03-25

Total Pages: 434

ISBN-13: 0307339394

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An unprecedented view of Green Beret training, drawn from the year Dick Couch spent at Special Forces training facilities with the Army’s most elite soldiers. In combating terror, America can no longer depend on its conventional military superiority and the use of sophisticated technology. More than ever, we need men like those of the Army Special Forces–the legendary Green Berets. Following the experiences of one class of soldiers as they endure this physically and mentally exhausting ordeal, Couch spells out in fascinating detail the demanding selection process and grueling field exercises, the high-level technical training and intensive language courses, and the simulated battle problems that test everything from how well SF candidates gather operational intelligence to their skills at negotiating with volatile, often hostile, local leaders. Chosen Soldier paints a vivid portrait of an elite group, and a process that forges America’s smartest, most versatile, and most valuable fighting force.

Leaders, Fools and Impostors
Leaders, Fools and Impostors

Author: Manfred F. R. Kets de Vries

Publisher:

Published: 2003

Total Pages: 0

ISBN-13: 9780595659470

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In this book of insightful essays, Kets de Vries explodes the myth that rationality is what governs the behavior of leaders and followers, and he provides a more realistic perspective on organizational functioning and the leader-follower relationship. The author shows that a great potential for distortion exists when leaders try to act out the fantasies of their followers, and explores the many psychological traps into which leaders frequently fall. Citing examples from business, history, literature, the arts, and from his own psychoanalytic and management-consulting practise, the author identifies distinct leader types. He describes, for instance, the narcissist whose drive for power and prestige can bring much-needed vitality to an organization, but whose inability to accept criticism ultimately creates a climate of subservience. He shows that entrepreneurs possess many of the qualities of the impostor, including a capacity for self-dramatization and a deep understanding of how to profit by others' wishes and desires, and he explains why entrepreneurs sometimes distort the truth about themselves and their organizations. Through numerous case studies of successful and failed leaders, Leaders, Fools, and Impostors furthers a better understanding of the leader-follower dynamic, and gives leaders the means to transform themselves.