Personal Growth, Organizational Behavior, Human Resources, Management & Leadership

The Human Element

Name: The Human Element
Author: Will Schutz
ISBN: 9781555426125

by Will Schutz

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Overview

Even the best of today's management programs - total quality management, employee involvement, self-directed teams - are doomed ultimately to fail without the full and honest participation of the individuals involved. Teams perform to their potential only when members accept themselves, take responsibility for their feelings, and interact constructively with others. Only leaders who possess the self-esteem and confidence needed to speak the truth gain the loyalty of followers. And groups make effective decisions when they create a structure that elicits and uses everyone's contributions. In The Human Element, author Will Schutz shows how to enhance our performance and improve our organizations by developing healthier concepts of ourselves and others. A personal development and leadership guide to creating a work environment where self-determination and openness are the rule, The Human Element offers strategies for heightening our awareness of ourselves and others - a key factor in shaping our relationships to work. Schutz combines his rigorous scientific and academic training with years of experience consulting to international organizations such as AT&T, NASA, and the World Bank to offer a field-tested approach to improving organizational effectiveness. He introduces tools and exercises - including the concordance model of decision making, the Team Compatibility Index for team building, the Work Relations Index for improved individual performance, and the leader as completer concept of leadership - to promote creativity and openness at work.

The bestselling author of Joy shows that the best management practices--including Total Quality Management--fail if individual employees lack self-esteem. Asserting that the true "bottom line" in business is the individual, Will Schultz shows exactly how to enhance business performance by increasing employees' self-esteem.

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Editorials

Library Journal

The complexities surrounding the diversity of individuals within the entire workforce is the main focus of this new work by the author of The Truth Option (Ten Speed Pr., 1984). Schutz offers a solid perspective which demonstrates that people and process are not mutually exclusive. Clarifying his view of interpersonal workforce relationships by devising a Periodic Table of Human Elements, he argues that self-concept and self-esteem are essential to the success of any organization. Schutz's "Human Element" seminar, now in multiple offerings worldwide, is summarized here, but using and applying his methods will likely require a long-term commitment and professional assistance for many. Still, Schutz is well known for his extensive array of behavior assessment instruments, and this new book now makes his work more accessible. For larger business collections.-Dale Farris, Groves, Tex.

Barbara Jacobs

Schutz has been heavily influenced by Esalen and Rolf, among other psychological constructs and individual thinkers. Nevertheless, what he provides is a way to apply his "human element" model--characterized by inclusion, control, and openness--to different types of situations in today's workplace. As any psychologist will agree, the drive to realize self-esteem is critical to an individual's life view; therefore, what more appropriate environment to promote the feelings of aliveness, self-awareness, competence, and the like than through business? Schutz expands the popular corporate teamwork concept (see "Inside Teams," below) to examine the reasons for success and failure. Schutz's insights into behavior, amply elaborated on through case examples, "pause for reflection" sections, and a variety of quizzes, provide great bases for both individual and organizational building and development.