Confidence

How Winning Streaks and Losing Streaks Begin and End

By: Rosabeth Moss Kanter

Narrated by: Carrington Macduffie

Length: 13 hrs and 6 mins

Publisher's summary

From the boardroom to the locker room to the living room - how winners become winners...and stay that way.

Is success simply a matter of money and talent? Or is there another reason why some people and organizations always land on their feet, while others, equally talented, stumble again and again? There’s a fundamental principle at work - the vital but previously unexamined factor called confidence - that permits unexpected people to achieve high levels of performance through routines that activate talent.

Confidence explains:

• Why the University of Connecticut women’s basketball team continues its winning ways even though recent teams lack the talent of their predecessors
• Why some companies are always positively perceived by employees, customers, Wall Street analysts, and the media while others are under a perpetual cloud
• How a company like Gillette or a team like the Chicago Cubs ends a losing streak and breaks out of a circle of doom
• The lessons a politician such as Nelson Mandela, who resisted the temptation to take revenge after being released from prison and assuming power, offers for leaders in both advanced democracies and trouble spots like the Middle East

From the simplest ball games to the most complicated business and political situations, the common element in winning is a basic truth about people: They rise to the occasion when leaders help them gain the confidence to do it. Confidence is the new theory and practice of success, explaining why success and failure are not mere episodes but self-perpetuating trajectories.

Rosabeth Moss Kanter shows why organizations of all types may be brimming with talent but not be winners, and provides people in leadership positions with a practical program for either maintaining a winning streak or turning around a downward spiral. Confidence is based on an extraordinary investigation of success and failure in companies such as Continental Airlines, Seagate, and Verizon and sports teams such as the University of North Carolina women’s soccer team, New England Patriots, and Philadelphia Eagles, as well as schools, health care, and politics.

Packed with brilliant, practical ideas such as “powerlessness corrupts” and the “timidity of mediocrity,” Confidence provides fresh thinking for perpetuating winning streaks and ending losing streaks in all facets of life - from the factors that can make or break corporations and governments to the keys for successful relationships in the workplace or at home.

©2004 Rosabeth Moss Kanter (P)2004 Books on Tape

Critic reviews

• A Business Week best seller

"Kanter, a professor at the Harvard Business School and author of numerous books, delivers valuable insights on the importance of confidence to success and on how organizations can create practices that build that much needed asset." (Publishers Weekly)

“Confidence...makes the compelling argument that the people who succeed are the people who expect to succeed.” (Elle)

“A successful book on leadership that illuminates the underlying principles applicable to teams and small businesses as well as schools, corporations, and countries.” (Washington Post)

Very solid

This is a very solid book. Like all business books there's parts where it lags, and you sometimes might think she's overusing certain case studies, but this is a good analysis of a difficult topic, well-written and well-read. I listened to this on the beach in Mexico and never once regretted the choice.

What was good was great but too long to say it!

This was good but needed mire substance of application.. more value less content shorter time!

Interesting but unstructured

Some good stories but I don't know what to do with them. I don't know what Confidence is supposed to mean, as here it seems to be used to identify anything that led to a positive outcome

Sports, sports, sports

I had heard a few strong references to this book--especially from women's groups--and assumed that it would be helpful. It isn't. If I cared about sports metaphors, I'd watch ESPN. I can't get past the first few hours, I'm so tired of ad nauseum review of football and basketball games. I find myself zoning out and not listening. While she promises interesting buisiness case studies later in the book, I'm too bored to continue, even for that grail. I am a quite annoyed that I've wasted my time on a book so narrowly focused in content and audience.

Hard to finish

I tried to get into this book but it felt repetitive and much longer than needed.

Waste of time

Hugely disappointing, totally bored could not get through it all.

Little insight, very shallow

This should be listed as a young adult book. It is very repetitive and light weight - the same (mostly sports) examples repeated again and again with few specifics and little insight.

Unsatisfying

Generally an uninspiring book from an author capable of better. Stretches and overuses sports examples (coming across as a latecoming "new fan", rather than as a student or researcher into the power of sports-as-metaphor). Repetitive to a fault.