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Transparency: Creating a Culture of Candor (Your Coach in a Box) | 
| Authors: Warren Bennis, Daniel Goleman, James O'toole
Creator: Erik Synnestvedt
Publisher: Your Coach in a Box
Category: Book
List Price: $19.98
Buy New: $11.33
You Save: $8.65 (43%)
New (21) Used (6) from $11.33
Avg. Customer Rating:  7 reviews
Sales Rank: 103880
Format: Audiobook, Unabridged
Media: Audio CD
Edition: Unabridged
Number Of Items: 3
Shipping Weight (lbs): 0.3
Dimensions (in): 11.9 x 0.6 x 0.5
ISBN: 1596592028
Dewey Decimal Number: 658
EAN: 9781596592025
ASIN: 1596592028
Publication Date: September 2, 2008
Availability: Usually ships in 1-2 business days
Shipping: International shipping available
Condition: Brand new item. Over 4 million customers served. Order now. Selling online since 1995. Few left in stock - order soon. Code: H20081010205928T
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Product Description
In Transparency, the authorsa powerhouse trio in the field of leadershiplook at what conspires against "a culture of candor" in organizations to create disastrous results, and suggest ways that leaders can achieve healthy and honest openness. They explore the lightning-rod concept of "transparency"which has fast become the buzzword not only in business and corporate settings but in government and the social sector as well. Together Bennis, Goleman, and O'Toole explore why the containment of truth is the dearest held value of far too many organizations and suggest practical ways that organizations, their leaders, their members, and their boards can achieve openness. After years of dedicating themselves to research and theory, at first separately, and now jointly, these three leadership giants reveal the multifaceted importance of candor and show what promotes transparency and what hinders it. They describe how leaders often stymie the flow of information and the structural impediments that keep information from getting where it needs to go. This vital resource is written for any organizationbusiness, government, and nonprofitthat must achieve a culture of candor, truth, and transparency.
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| Customer Reviews: Read 2 more reviews...
 Great Book for Current or Future Business Leaders September 28, 2008
This book does an excellent job of explaining not only why you SHOULDN'T hoard or cover up negative information about yourself or your company, but why you CAN NOT. Great book. Highly recommended.
 Transparency, but also Leadership and Trust August 25, 2008
An excellent book by three of my favorite authors. A bit of a Democratic bias in how they select their stories from my point of view . . . but good stuff for today's and tomorrow's leaders.
The book could have been better balanced between the sad stories of leaders who were not transparent and those on the other side who smear people without fear of reprecussion. Bloggers are not all automatically good guys.
So many good lines and good points . . . I will make slides to use in my next seminar. Bennis and Goleman have been most helpful in my career as a leader and consultant.
 No Kindle edition August 14, 2008
0 out of 10 found this review helpful
This book sounds interesting but there is no Kindle edition, so I won't be buying it.
Good as Usual August 2, 2008
the book is simply written with the usual wisdom that these authors/consultants bring to bear.
Easy to read and totally enjoyable
"Technologies change. Human nature doesn't." June 24, 2008
Warren Bennis, Daniel Goleman, and James O'Toole are three of the most influential business thinkers in recent years and, with Patricia Ward Biederman, collaborated on this book that consists of three separate but related essays: "Creating a Culture of Candor" (Bennis, Goleman, and Biederman examine transparency with and between organizations), "Speaking Truth to Power" (O'Toole shares his perspectives on transparency in terms of personal responsibility), and "The New Transparency" (Bennis explains how digital technology is making the entire world transparent). According to Thomas Friedman, the world has become flat as a result of forces that "are empowering more and more individuals today to reach farther, faster, deeper, and cheaper than ever before, and that is equalizing power - and equalizing opportunity, by giving so many more people the tools to connect, compete, and collaborate." Bennis, Goleman, O'Toole and Biederman agree. The first essay suggests how the same "flattening forces" to which Friedman refers also have a profound impact on relationships between and among organizations throughout the world. In the second essay, O'Toole eloquently as well as convincingly stresses the importance of responsibility and (yes) accountability of everyone who is involved in those relationships. Then in the third essay, Bennis shares his insights concerning the most significant consequences of technology, given the fact that "leaders are losing their monopoly on power, and this has positive impacts - notably the democratization of power - as well as some negative ones."
In the Preface, Bennis notes that this book really isn't about technology. "It is about the things that have mattered since the new technology was the flint and the longbow - courage, integrity, candor, responsibility. Technologies change. Human nature doesn't." That is the core concept in O'Toole's essay and wholly consistent with the core concepts in his previously published books, notably The Executive's Compass, Leading Change, and Creating the Good Life. I agree with him that "speaking to power is, perhaps, the oldest of all ethical challenges." He briefly discusses several plays (Sophocles' Antigone, John Osborne's Luther, and Robert Bolt's A Man for All Seasons) who protagonist offers a reminder to leaders in our own time of the responsibility to create a transparent "culture of candor." O'Toole also cites FedEx, the Cowles Media Corporation, GM, and Motorola as examples of organizations that do -- or do not -- have such a culture, those whose leaders are - or are not -- "constantly willing to rethink their most basic assumptions through a process of constructive dissent...about such often-taboo subjects as the nature of working conditions they offer employees, the purposes of their corporation, and their responsibilities to various stakeholders." Whatever the size and nature of an organization may be, O'Toole insists, it must be one "one in which every employee is empowered to speak the truth." Trust must be the essential ingredient to its effectiveness [and is] the most elusive and fragile aspect of leadership" because it is so difficult to earn but so easy to lose and, once lost, nearly impossible to regain.
I highly recommend this book to those in senior-level executive positions as well as to others whose ambition is to ascend to that level. Speaking directly to the reader of this review, I urge you do everything you can to help establish and then support a transparent culture of candor. If you find yourself in one in which you cannot "speak to power" despite your best efforts, seek another culture in which you can. Meanwhile, keep in mind that Dante reserved the last and worst ring in hell for those who, in a moral crisis, preserved their neutrality.
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