Book cover of The Leader on the Couch: A Clinical Approach to Changing People and Organisations

Book description

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…

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Why read it?

2 authors picked The Leader on the Couch as one of their favorite books. Why do they recommend it?

The book presents business leaders as characters who are complex, complicated, and far from as rational as the public often holds them to. 

I loved reading it as much as I enjoy good fiction. It is a gripping tale of protagonists who are very human, inventive, sensitive, and sometimes a bit of drama queens. I enjoyed the compelling tales of vulnerability and ambition, as well as reciprocity. To lead is not one-sided, and the leaders are often influenced, even manipulated, by the followers. 

I loved how the book spins its tale with quite a few twists. Leadership is by no…

This is an undercelebrated leadership book.

Rarely do we go “under the hood” to understand the drivers that account for 90% of our day-to-day behavior. Understanding the core impetus behind a leader’s behavior and decisions is clearly one of my passions, and this book is an interesting read in that regard. 

In this book, Manfred F. R. Kets de Vries deftly deconstructs the way we believe we make decisions to reveal that, regardless of the veneer of rationality we maintain, our emotional responses to formative events early in life remain our inner compass.

His comparison of disparate paths to self-development…

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December on 5C4 by Adam Strassberg,

Magical realism meets the magic of Christmas in this mix of Jewish, New Testament, and Santa stories–all reenacted in an urban psychiatric hospital!

On locked ward 5C4, Josh, a patient with many similarities to Jesus, is hospitalized concurrently with Nick, a patient with many similarities to Santa. The two argue…

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