Review of "The 10 Laws of Trust: Building the Bonds That Make A Business Great," by Joel Peterson with David A. Kaplan

Review of

The 10 Laws of Trust: Building the Bonds That Make A Business Great, by Joel Peterson with David A. Kaplan ISBN 9780814437452

Five out of five stars

 In general, I find business/leadership books to be underwhelming, the advice is generally shopworn and laden with cheerleading cliché after cliché with no real details on how to carry them out. Within that context, this book was refreshing. First off, the points about trust being a two-way street from managers to the managed are so critical. People that work in an atmosphere of fear and uncertainty do not do the best that they can, if there is no trust then opportunities will be missed.

 Appealing to authority on the part of a manager rather than skills and knowledge is the easy approach and will work for a short time, any improvement is generally a case of the Hawthorne effect rather than a consequence of the decisions. The emphasis here is on the long-term and the realization that there will be a tomorrow where you will have to own the consequences of what you do today.

 This is a book that should be read by all graduates of management programs, whether they be academic or internal to a business. Easily understood with a positive appeal to your emotions, this is a book that can lead to valuable changes. People with a lot of career miles behind them will no doubt recognize some of the things that went wrong in the projects and organizations that they were a part of.

This book was made available for free for review purposes.