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The Stress Effect: Why Smart Leaders Make Dumb Decisions-And What to Do About It by Henry L. Thompson San Francisco: Jossey-Bass, 2010 329 pages $26.95
There are several recent books and articles that explore leader failures, often attributing to them bad behavior, character flaw, or dysfunction. The Stress Effect offers a different approach and perspective that may be useful to leaders and managers across several domains.
The author has impressive credentials garnered from three careers, which provide a unique perspective on the topic of leader decisionmaking ability. Dr. Thompson began as a military officer whose experiences extend from Vietnam to assignments in the Center for Army Leadership, then as a university professor and psychology department chairperson, and now as a leadership consultant with his own firm.
The book is intended for those interested in leader development and organizational dynamics. Some chapters will be more comfortable for readers with backgrounds in industrial and organizational psychology or organizational behavior. Leadership practitioners will be tempted to jump right to the latter chapter, "The Seven Best Practices to Prevent Stress"-that would be a mistake. That chapter is an integration of a number of best practices introduced in several other books so nothing new is presented. The uniqueness is the use of the acronym ARSENAL to frame the practices-Awareness, Rest, Support, Exercise, Nutrition, Attitude, Learning. However, to appreciate how this framework may be useful, all readers should expend the requisite effort with...