Changing on the Job: Developing Leaders for a Complex World, by Jennifer Garvey Berger, Stanford University Press,  €37, $35.

Global leadership is a topic of significant interest here at The Global Journal. We often report on political and business leaders, and the impact their work has on the world in which we live. Jennifer Berger's Changing on the Job provides some interesting insights as to how a leader thinks and interacts with their peers, and how the role can change due to professional or personal factors. She illustrates her concepts using various real-life scenarios and engages the reader in deciding what their reaction would be. At this point a technical discussion starts, complete with diagrams! This is the point where I get lost: it’s essentially a discussion on what seems like natural human interaction, with tips such as "Look for key issues" and "Ask the same question in a new way to go deeper." Keen to read about leadership, I was rather disappointed by the technical approach Berger’s book adopts. Perhaps the effect of the book is achieved by forcing readers to be confronted with lessons for life that should have been learned on the school playground years ago, so they can reevaluate their interactions. Changing on the Job is an ideal book for people interested in leadership from a professional point of view, HR managers and such. For the casual reader such as myself, Berger’s book does not lead anywhere.

–A.L.