This is an updated version of the author’s earlier book, Hidden Dynamics, that I helped the author reorganize because of my experience using it as a text. My comments still hold. Either edition is well-worth reading and there are used copies of Hidden Dynamics easily available on Amazon.

In these times of constant change, emotions can no longer be politely stifled. They are constantly at the surface and need to be harvested into a positive organizational force to enhance results and one’s own job satisfaction.

Its examples, practical exercises, and tools for training will: 1) help improve individual and team performance; 2) reduce interpersonal conflict and barriers to cooperation; 3) integrate feelings and facts when making business decisions; 4) develop managerial skills of facilitation, communication, and leadership; and 5) motivate employees to take more responsibility.

Each chapter provides questions to ask and specific actions to take to help one’s colleagues banish forever such common barriers to participation as hierarchy issues, career problems, lack of cooperation, destructive management styles, and jaded skepticism.

She takes the issue of “emotion” out of the closet and names erroneous assumptions we tend to have about them. The point is made that there are no secrets: emotional needs always express themselves one way or another. This is her first principle of emotion. There are seven others: 2) Anger is an expression of need; 3) Our feelings and needs are not wrong or bad; 4) Emotions are the gateway to vitality and feeling alive; 5) We can address emotional issues and still save face; 6) Immediate reactions to problems often disguise deeper feelings; 7) We must clarify individual needs before problem solving with others; 8) We need to express positive feelings and communicate negative ones. These are thoroughly discussed.

Other chapters address issues of fear, hidden agendas, “hot buttons” creating conflict, corporate craziness, changing relationships between managers and employees, aligning organizational needs and individual talents, gaining commitment to change, and revitalizing the manager’s role (An excellent chapter for outlining a manager’s new job in an environment committed to quality).

This book is written for managers at all levels as well as senior corporate executives and their staffs. It can’t help but to enhance communication and teamwork and help overcome obstacles of poor communication and fear.

Organizational politics and human emotions are a virtually unknown and volatile territory in the recent and not so recent history of the American workforce, especially the issue of physician behavior in a healthcare environment. This is an outstanding, readable, “nuts and bolts” book with outstanding exercises for dealing with real issues right now. It is a welcome and much-needed volume that supplies a wonderful compass for addressing natural human emotional and resistance issues in an organization’s quality transformation.

I have taught many seminars using the book as an actual text—and people gladly do the reading assignments…and comment on how they’ve applied it outside of work as well. There is no more practical book for dealing with emotions in the workplace without theory and platitudes. It is results-based and does not succumb to the easy traps of false profundity or “deep therapy.” Who doesn’t need therapy? Let’s just go to work and get “results”!