![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
Book Review: Treating People Well
Oct. 12th, 2017 09:10 amLea Berman and Jeremy Bernard’s Treating People Well: The Extraordinary Power of Civility at Work and in Life is a self-help book, a treasure trove of anecdotes about life in the White House (for both Berman and Bernard were White House social secretaries before they wrote this book: Berman with the second Bush, Bernard with Obama), and a genteel bipartisan “fuck you” to our current president.
This last is never outright stated. But it’s impossible for me to read a book where social secretaries warmly praise the value of civility, honesty, and loyalty to one’s staff - and condemn arrogance, anger, and overconfidence as poor leadership and signs of deep-seated insecurity and weakness - and not see that as an incisively polite denunciation of 45’s entire administration.
Also there are lots of fun tidbits about presidential history and diplomatic faux pas of the past, like the time that President Gerald Ford ushered Queen Elizabeth II onto the dance floor and the Marine Band struck up “The Lady Is a Tramp.” Why? How? WHY?
But on the bright side, I will probably never fuck up as comprehensively as the band director did that day, and I find that cheering. In fact I think this book may be most useful, as self-help, because it puts everything into perspective: most of us are not presidential social secretaries, and so the entire world is rarely watching, so our gaffes really do not loom that large.
This last is never outright stated. But it’s impossible for me to read a book where social secretaries warmly praise the value of civility, honesty, and loyalty to one’s staff - and condemn arrogance, anger, and overconfidence as poor leadership and signs of deep-seated insecurity and weakness - and not see that as an incisively polite denunciation of 45’s entire administration.
Also there are lots of fun tidbits about presidential history and diplomatic faux pas of the past, like the time that President Gerald Ford ushered Queen Elizabeth II onto the dance floor and the Marine Band struck up “The Lady Is a Tramp.” Why? How? WHY?
But on the bright side, I will probably never fuck up as comprehensively as the band director did that day, and I find that cheering. In fact I think this book may be most useful, as self-help, because it puts everything into perspective: most of us are not presidential social secretaries, and so the entire world is rarely watching, so our gaffes really do not loom that large.
