Confidence: How Winning Streaks and Losing Streaks Begin and End

by Rosabeth Moss Kanter

Book Overview

From the locker room to the living room to the boardroom--how winners become winners . . . and stay that way. Is success simply a matter of money and talent? Or is there another reason why some people... This description may be from another edition of this product.

• Format: Hardcover
• Language: English
• ISBN: 1400052904
• ISBN13: 9781400052905
• Release Date: August 2004
• Publisher: Crown Business
• Length: 402 Pages
• Weight: 1.65 lbs.
• Dimensions: 1.3" x 6.4" x 9.7"

Customer Reviews

Excellent book on winning in life

Rosabeth Kanter uses relevant case studies to show us how confidence produces winning streaks in every walk of life. This book provides a unique perspective on this heretofore unexplored requisite for success. It is enlightening. Another worthwhile and compelling book that should not be missed if you want to learn how to be emotionally self-reliant and make the most of every situation is Optimal Thinking: How To Be Your Best Self.

Essential for understanding business and career change

The word "confidence" gets overused and abused among many personal and business coaches, so I was surprised to see Kanter's choice of title. In a way, it's misleading, because Kanter focuses more broadly on how to capitalize on winning streaks and turn around losing streaks. Confidence is only part of a leadership formula. Kanter chooses sports examples because they're clear-cut. Wins and losses are easy to identify. However, the lessons from those case histories apply to a variety of business, organizational and personal situations. If you read carefully, she warns that turnarounds aren't easy. "Try not to lose twice in a row," she warns. If you conclude there's no point in trying to win, there's trouble ahead. Signs of a losing streak include weak accountability, deteriorating relationships and disappearing initiative. "The only good thing about losing is that it sounds an alarm bell," she concludes. Once you realize you're on a losing streak, Kanter emphasizes, you need to build, not retreat. Stay calm, she says. Dig deeper. Work harder. Seek support, even when you feel like hiding. And most important, remember you can't "jump the processes." Use small steps to achieve big goals. Everybody wants a quick fix and that's a surefire recipe for disaster. As a career consultant, I am often asked how to break individual losing streaks. Typically a client says something like, "I lost my job, got sick, had family crises, and had to move. And now I'm defeated." Or clients lose one job after another, fueled by discouragement. Kanter's book has to be translated to reach individuals. Her message seems to be, "Someone has to take charge." In one moving example, a family rallied behind a teenager who was failing math. They bought him nice clothes to communicate, "You're worth it." The stigma of hiring a tutor was defused by making the tutor a member of "Team Robert." In another example, a woman's public humiliation was defused by her husband's strong encouragement. So if you lack an insightful manager or empathetic relatives, you may have to draw your own plan. Coaches and consultants may become your change managers. I'm working on an article for my website on this very topic. Bottom line, though, this book clearly targets managers who are in a position to mastermind a turnaround. I'd have liked to see more about the way individual employees or team members can handle themselves, regardless of the leader's capabilities. Should they leave a losing organization? Strengthen themselves and create their own goals? Kanter has always studied organizations at the macro level and it's not reasonable to ask her to address individuals now. This book deserves attention for frank, unsparing focus on winners and losers, and for an understanding of the way organizations win and lose every day, all around us.

SMART AND ACCESSIBLE: A MUST-READ

Rosabeth Moss Kanter's latest work has successfully identified and elaborated an essential, but often glossed-over component of success (and failure): Confidence (and the lack thereof). The book does a terrific job at tackling a slippery subject -- one that would, at first glance, appear to be very hard to study, and even harder to explain. This book could have laid out a theory and left it at that - or it could have told stories without developing a robust conceptual framework. Instead, Kanter's book digs deep inside the concept with surprisingly in-depth case studies of winners and losers (including business leaders, sports teams, and political leaders), and also builds a fresh and incisive model, filled with valuable take-away lessons. Her penetrating analysis of confidence, though intellectual and serious, is written in a clear and accessible manner. I found it not only to be an interesting and fun read, but also a useful resource for work. Although it is often implied that confidence is a special quality found only in extraordinary individuals - either you have it or you don't - or, alternatively, that "all it takes is believing in yourself," Rosabeth Moss Kanter shows, rather, that confidence is actually a purposeful endeavor, one that can be organized, systematized, and practiced. Only when we understand confidence better, can we successfully apply it in our own lives. And this is why this book is an important read.

Documentation of efficacy -- take the high road and lead!

Rosabeth Moss Kanter documents example after example of courageous leaders who defied the odds and led their organizations out of failure, danger and/or chaos into shining examples that have inspired millions. Her sports analogies are both easy to relate to and fascinating to read, inspiring leaders (whether or not they have any doubt) with documentation on the efficacy and track record of success that most often follow those who take the high road and lead with courage, ethics, energy and conviction. And if there is any doubt that taking the high road is the best way to turn a losing streak into winning, her analysis of the work of Nelson Mandela is stunningly convincing. In March 2004, I had the great pleasure of hearing Dr. Kanter recite, sans notes, the outline of the book's final draft with a small group of nonprofit leaders visiting Boston from 15 cities. Her research, insight, analysis, energy, passion and presentation were both astonishing and inspiring. All of us, who face the daunting imperative of fundraising in a poor economy and the many challenges/opportunities, thrills and perils of both profit and and nonprofit corporate leadership, were mesmerized, electrified and totally re-energized by her presentation. Reading the book only deepens that experience and has motivated me to order 30 copies for the staff and senior corps members of the relatively young (5-year-old) AmeriCorps agency I have the privilege of leading. This is the book that will inspire our team to continue to excel and thrive and soar in taking the services we provide to the next level of growth and leadership in our great community. This book will give our team the confidence of knowing exactly how the best examples of success have been achieved by others, and that confidence will ensure that our program and those we serve in our beloved community will stay in the winner's column. Penny Bailer, Executive Director, City Year Detroit 09-19-04

INSIGHTFUL, USEFUL, AND VERY WELL-WRITTEN

This book ties together a lot of powerful ideas about psychology, behaviour, and organisational systems. It's a book about leadership that identifies the responsibilities of leaders. It shows how to create a system in which investors, customers, and employees can have confidence. I've already used it in my business. Once I picked it up, I couldn't stop reading. I found it well-written and clear. It builds its argument step by step, chapter by chapter, so it's important to read all of it and see the connections. If you want to know how to help everyone play at a high level, this is the best new book about the roots of winning performance. Anyone who doesn't see the significant ideas and lasting value clearly hasn't read the book!