Reframing Change: How to Deal with Workplace Dynamics, Influence Others, and Bring People Together to Initiate Positive Change by Jean Kantambu Latting and V. Jean Ramsey

Book Review by Zinta Aistars

• Hardcover: 226 pages

• Publisher: Praeger, 2009

• Price: $34.95

• ISBN-10: 0313381240

• ISBN-13: 978-0313381249



So many how-to books out there today—how to be better at this or that, how to learn this or that skill. One would think by now humankind would have achieved perfection. No argument here: we are far from perfect, and we have a lot to learn. Or, if at heart we all pretty much know what is missing, what we need to do—let’s just call it the Golden Rule of treating others as we would wish to be treated, delivered in countless variations—it is a message that bears repeating an unlimited number of times and perhaps in an unlimited number of perspectives. After all, the same message delivered another way may be just what any one of us may need, and the moment in time that any one of us is truly receptive to that message is constantly in flux, too.

So, yes, we have here another book about how to be better human beings and how to get along better with each other in the workplace. And I’m going to recommend this one. Not only for the workplace, but for anyplace, because I found its approach and conclusions are just as relevant to our personal lives as our work lives. Indeed, I had to wonder in reading it why the authors would limit its scope to workplace only. This is valuable stuff, wherever you might wish to have more fruitful interactions with your fellow man and woman. It could even be read as sound parenting advice.

Authors Jean Kantambu Latting and V. Jean Ramsey are equipped to speak with authority. Latting is an organizational consultant and co-director of Leading Consciously. She is professor emeritus of leadership and change in the graduate school of social work, University of Houston in Texas. Ramsey is also a co-director of Leading Consciously, and is professor emeritus of management at Texas Southern University.

The book reads something like talk therapy, bringing the reader into a workshop or seminar of others who are working to handle various workplace obstacles and challenges. Each chapter is filled with transcripts of discussions and conversations with groups and individuals, handling situations that the reader will recognize as similar to one’s own. These are common issues cropping up anywhere where people work together—the dynamics of diverse personalities and work styles, intertwined with personal problems and issues that seep into our work lives. Lest this devolve into too much group talk, however, short paragraphs called “Curious About the Research?” are regularly interspersed, bringing the science to the talk. The research cites studies and substantiating figures, often piquing curiosity to extend one’s reading to learn more.

The best advice is simple advice, not to be confused with easy-to-take advice. Thus, I’m sure, the need for the same basic messages to be conveyed to us over and over again. The approach taken by these authors is wonderfully simple and on target. The transcribed discussions unfold as surely do the questions and arguments in most readers’ minds. What do you mean, the change has to begin with me? Yes, but he started it! It’s obvious that I am right, and she is wrong. And so on. The authors have obviously heard them all, and here they all are.

The premise of the steps for positive change suggested in this book is that the reader is a person of integrity. Integrity is defined as a pattern of behavior that is consistent with one’s values. Discord, guilt, anger, defensiveness, all that bag of negativity in human interaction, opens up whenever we act in discord with our values. There’s the hint we should never ignore: sense any of these cropping up and look to realign your behavior with your values. Time to make conscious change.

“Demanding that others change often increases resistance and ends up pitting people against one another. Self-change in more likely to plant seeds leading to broader-based change in the work setting—change that may be more sustainable. No matter how powerless you feel in a given situation, you have choices. The ability to choose is a major source of your power to make a difference.” (pg.8)

Assuming we readers are a nice sort, interesting and willing to be persons of integrity, the book prescribes clear steps on how to live a life of integrity, in or out of the workplace. Testing assumptions is a good place to start. Even when we think we are being rational and clear, we may not be aware of just how many prejudices and biases and assumptions are entering into our thinking. For instance, a great many of us like to think that we are above average. If that were indeed so, averages would be quite different. We can’t all be above average in all that we do. It’s a good place to start: strip away the ego for a moment and examine the face in the mirror. Right may not always be exclusively on our side. Remember that Golden Rule, that most ancient of self-help mantras? Consider the other side may have a valid viewpoint, too. Another human tendency is to fill in the blanks, the unknowns, with our own assumptions, and this is where truth often becomes degraded.

Putting yourself in another’s shoes is always a good idea. How to do that, the authors suggest, is by “being in the question.” Assumptions fade when we open ourselves to ask questions rather than make hard and fast statements.

“Being in the question is wondering what things mean instead of assuming you already know. It involves treating your first thought as a hypothesis rather than a statement of truth … As such, it takes more work—and humility—than being in the answer. It requires searching for alternative explanations for others’ behavior.” (pg. 22)

Among our frequent assumptions are that others have the same background as we do. Being aware of cultural differences is essential in an ever more tightly knit global community. The authors remind us that cultural differences extend beyond national or ethnic origin, but involve also social group memberships that may result from our biology, gender, age, sexual orientation, hierarchy, economic class, occupation, geographic location, and many other factors.

Clearing emotions is the next step. While the authors warn against suppressing emotions—this can never lead to positive change or understanding—they also warn that thinking through a cloud of emotions can fog our path to resolving misunderstandings. Bringing up, thoroughly examining, then setting aside our emotions are steps that must be taken first; there are no shortcuts. Understanding and facing an emotion is not the same as acting on it. In fact, understanding and facing our emotions first and foremost is the only sure way to prevent acting out.

Having cleaned house, we can begin to build effective relationships. Powerful listening is an important building block for intimacy and the ability to work together as a team (can you see why I think this book would work equally well outside of the workplace?). When one listens, it is crucial to not substitute one’s own version of events, to not put down the other person or immediately toss aside their viewpoint without consideration, or to downplay the other’s perspective. Positive feedback opens people up, and we can offer it—even when we are in disagreement—in many ways. We give feedback with our body language, with the tone of our voice, with our lack of focus. We shut others down when we are sarcastic or critical. We also shut down open communication when we use humor that is hurtful to others.

When we are in a situation where change is needed, powerful listening lays the groundwork. “Three things are required for individuals to hear your feedback and be willing to change. First, they must believe change is necessary. Second, they must believe it is an improvement … Third, they must believe they’re capable of making the change.” (pg. 80)

Change cannot be forced. It is a choice that we must each make for ourselves, and that we must feel we are freely choosing for ourselves.

Bridging differences is then the next step, and here the authors stress how power, or being dominant in a relationship or group, causes a kind of blindness, or tunnel vision. Diversity is crucial, but the authors clarify: “Diversity alone is insufficient. Simply adding differences to your group or organization and then pretending those differences don’t exist won’t get the job done … people must feel their contributions matter. Yes, diversity can bring conflict and tension, but it can also be productive.” (pg. 126)

Research shows that “bringing people with different perspectives together often results in increased creativity, innovation, and performance. The key is in learning how to manage the conflict and to learn from one another.” (pg. 127)

When encountering differences, we sometimes make mistakes, act badly, hurt others. We may discriminate against others different than ourselves, or even exploit those over whom we are dominant, or in a position of power. At these times, we are in discord with integrity, i.e., we are not living according to our values. Guilt can be a powerful force for change, alerting us that we are doing wrong and that we must make amends, take the steps necessary to resolve the wrong.

An especially interesting chapter addresses self-deception. Just as it is human nature to think of ourselves as often somehow better or smarter, more valid, than others, it can also be a human weakness to seek blame and so seek out rationalizations for ourselves when we have done wrong. Self-betrayal, the authors write, is when we act outside our integrity, against our own values, and “then, to justify your actions, you figure out reasons to magnify the other person’s faults and your own virtues. In so doing, you deceive yourself.” (pg. 150)

Rather than blame-shifting to ease our own discomfort, we must look honestly at ourselves, but also at the other, doing our best to understand why they are as they are, even if that state is abhorrent to us. Trying to understand another’s perspective, the authors stress, is not the same as agreeing with them. Everyone wants to be heard, even the wrongdoer, and in being heard, we have actually allowed the first step toward change. (The authors here also make an important distinction for those who are in battering or abusive relationships, in or out of the workplace, as not being responsible for the bad behavior of the other.)

“People do not resist change, they resist being changed. People want to change on their own terms, not someone else’s.” (pg. 173)

Perhaps this book’s most valuable statement is that the commonly held “wisdom” that people resist change is actually constantly disproved when we take a look around us. Life is, by its very definition, to be in a state of constant and unabated change. People, workplace environments, relationships of all kinds, actually thrive on change. Think of change as growth, and you understand that change is necessary for any living thing. We must only respect what it is that makes us afraid, causes resistance … often just another name for being protective … and we unleash all manner of positive change.

This, then, is that core idea of “reframing change.” It may not always be easy, but it is often necessary and often good. We feel a deep need for change when our environment becomes uncomfortable, and discomfort always has reason. Recognizing “small wins” along the way, giving ourselves and others positive feedback, being conscious and emphatic to our differences, all lead to achieving a better and more productive workplace.

~for The Smoking Poet, Spring 2010 issue

Facts About the Moon: Poems by Dorianne Laux

Book Review by Zinta Aistars


• Paperback: 104 pages
• Publisher: W. W. Norton & Company, 2007
• Price: $14.95
• ISBN-10: 0393329623
• ISBN-13: 978-0393329629


No time lost, the opening poem immediately, stunningly, reminds me why Dorianne Laux still ranks among my top three favorite poets and keeps giving the other two a really hard time. “The Life of Trees” swirls me back into memory, all senses remembering. Once again, I am lying in my bed in the dark of a backcountry night, shack on a dirt road, tree branch scratching along the glass pane of my window.

… I want to sleep
and dream the life of trees, beings
from the muted world who care
nothing for Money, Politics, Power,
Will or Right, who want little from the night
but a few stars going dim, a white owl
lifting from their limbs, who want only
to sink their roots into the wet ground …

Because Laux understands and masters simplicity, and remaining simple in a complex world is one of the greatest arts of all. She speaks proletarian with the finesse of an intellectual, everything about these poems tapped into the blood of a common people in an uncommon world. She writes of the poor and homeless in “Democracy,” she makes us feel the highs and lows of everyday life, of angst, of growing pains, of loneliness and new connection.

“Vacation Sex” is a poem that is good and earthy and real, by God, real, not that drivel written in bad romances, posed for fantasy and never in reality, and never meant to be. Laux captures the couple that we are, our neighbors, our friends, dumping luggage at the door on the return home from vacation, and leaping back into the comfort of known bed, known body, known joy.

Nature, animals, earth, moon, connection with and between humans, these are the favorite things of Laux poetry. One of my favorites is “The Crossing,” in which the poet bride assesses the long-term value of a new husband by the way he treats an elk standing unmovable in the road. In the details, we are known.

Title poem, and moonlit we come to understand the light and shadow side of love, none purer than a mother’s, none more anguished and tested than the mother’s of a bad-boy son.

We don’t deserve the moon.
Maybe we once did but not now
after all we’ve done …

… you want to slap her back to sanity, remind her
of the truth: he was a leech, a fuckup,
a little shit, and you almost do
until …

I won’t finish that. Endings of poems, especially Laux’s, are such dynamite. They either blow up all in your face, a ruin, or, as Laux’s do, they blow up your heart, shatter it with rediscovered feeling, remembering, suddenly, what it feels like to be sensitive and raw and open and vulnerable to life: vacation sex, flashlights under sheets as a child reading at night, elk caught in headlights on the road, your heart “a blue cup fallen from someone’s hand.”


~Zinta Aistars for The Smoking Poet, Spring 2010

The Imposter? How a Juvenile Criminal Succeeded in Business and Life by Kip Kreiling

Book Review by Zinta Aistars


Paperback: 312 pages
Publisher: Transformation Help Press, 2009
Price: $17.77
ISBN-10: 0615320554
ISBN-13: 978-0615320557



When the author contacted me about doing a review of his book, I very nearly said no. I get several review requests per week, so I have been forced to get choosier about the review copies I accept. But I took a closer look at the book description and changed my mind. We don’t have nearly enough books that talk honestly about the shortcomings of our juvenile justice system. Perhaps Kip Kreiling had something new and important to add?

I was a little put off by the large print of the book when my copy arrived. It makes the book bulkier than it need be, and implies a readership it probably doesn’t have—the elderly? The very young?

I started to read, and large print was forgotten, as I fell into the story. This was a heck of a story. One with which, unfortunately, I was all too familiar from my own experiences, raising my son as a single mother. Those preteen and teen years can be so very difficult for boys and young men growing up without good, strong male role models, and having a father present doesn’t in and of itself fill that gap. It depends on the type of father. But I could relate to young Kip’s mother painfully well, the heartbreak of watching a son struggle to find his place in a world that makes a molehill of a youthful mistake quickly turn into a mountain of trouble. What should be a “teaching moment” or a wake-up call often gets turned into a downward spiral by a juvenile justice system that is often predatory and punitive rather than caring and rehabilitative.

With Kreiling’s misadventures with drug use; gangs or kids simply gone wild; with the idiocy of the current juvenile justice system—“They were turning me into a harder criminal than I already was.” (page 35)—and an educational system that has been broken for a long time; with a society in general that treats our youth as second or even last priority; a foster system that started as a good idea but is now more infamous for abuse cases than rescue stories; we are all in trouble. This cannot go on.

I read with excitement, because Kreiling was telling a story that needs to be told. I’m glad to see he is an enthused marketer as well, doing everything he can to promote his book. Good. I have visions of this book being passed around juvenile delinquent homes and youth prisons, even adult prisons, with its basic message of hope: everyone can change. Indeed, perhaps that is the thought behind the large print, because those who languish in prison more often than not come from backgrounds of poverty and little to no education, so whatever can be done to make this easier to read is a good idea.

A better idea: another round of editing that goes deep with cuts and brings the writing, which is not bad but not yet up to par, to the level this memoir deserves. Personally, my suggestion would be to lose the eight principles of change and to simply write his story, tell it like it was and how it is now. Write the memoir, skip the rest. Let the story tell its own lessons, rather than inserting an artificial listing of principles, or morals, at the finish of most chapters. After all, none of the lessons are particularly memorable, and certainly nothing we haven’t heard before. Principles of change such as (paraphrased)—change your environment and you will change yourself; don’t plan for failure; choose your friends carefully because you will mimic their behavior; get disciplined in pursuing your dreams, and so on, appear in countless variations in a thousand self-help books and many are already a part of the commonly known 12-step programs that, frankly, do it better.

When Kreiling wrote about his own life, I was mesmerized. This was honest, raw, ugly, real. This was good and inspirational storytelling, with plenty of conflict and obstacles to be overcome, a hero that kept falling but still had something of integrity buried deep in him right from the start, keeping the reader interested and rooting for him to survive. One only had to look closely enough, and through caring eyes, to see the potential and root for it to rise.

While some of Kreiling’s intellectual explorations are mildly interesting, they, too, tended to distract from the meat of a great story. I had to think of one of the most powerful books I’ve ever read: Monster : The Autobiography of an L.A. Gang Member by Sanyika Shakur, who today works to end gang violence. Had Kreiling stuck to his memoir, his good message would surely have more power and less of a didactic tone. Instead, Kreiling veers into side stories about Abraham Lincoln and Ben Franklin and Ayn Rand and young Gisela, a brainwashed Communist who sees the light by spending time with a tour group of boys (including Kreiling) from the free West. These tour group boys understand that they will not change Gisela by preaching to her. They instinctively understand that she will learn in a more meaningful way simply my observing what freedom looks like in her peers from the free world. Kreiling would do well to apply the same wisdom to his book.

Mind you, those side stories are interesting, and I could relate. I, too, traveled behind the Iron Curtain as a young woman. I, too, was drawn to Ayn Rand’s philosophy, and I even went through some of the same internal debates as Kreiling, wondering how and if Rand’s objectivism could fit with Christianity. I suspect if I ever met Kreiling, we’d have a heck of a lot to talk about and a great deal of experiences on which to compare notes. Yet crowding all these tangents into one book is just that, overcrowding, and dilutes from the purity of his message.

This message is too important to miss. Kreiling has all the requirements to be the one to tell it. He has been to those darkest of places. He has hit despair, seen the insides of prisons, and he has known what it means to sink into and to beat an addiction and to relapse and have to beat it again. He knows what it means to betray and be betrayed. And there is no more powerful storyteller than he who knows and tells it from the heart.

Kreiling has lots of heart. Or call it conscience. It is his heart and his conscience—and a keen intelligence that makes itself known even when still uneducated—that save him and save this book. Kreiling has led a remarkable life. Today a successful businessman, husband and father, he has proven that change is possible. He has shown that any addiction can be overcome. These are the makings of a great story. Cleaning away the frill and the fuss, this great story could really touch many hungry hearts and minds, those like his, despairing to keep hope alive.

~Zinta Aistars for The Smoking Poet, Spring 2010 Issue

"A product of our broken urban society, Kip Kreiling was arrested 3 times before he was 10 years old and 11 times before he was 14. When Kip was only 13 year old, he was taken out of 2 schools, a shopping mall, and a bank in handcuffs. Because of his criminal activity as a youth, and the resulting chaos he brought into his life, Kip moved 34 times from the young age of 11 to the age of 26. On average, he moved every 5 months for 15 years, in and out of jails, group homes, and street shelters, while his mother and father moved less than 4 times each. Today, Kip is a Fortune 15 executive who has had the opportunity to work with several of the world's most respected companies including Ford Motor, Hewlett Packard, Vodafone, and the UnitedHealth Group. As of 2009, Kip has provided transformation and business leadership services for over 40 companies in more than 20 industries. Between his corporate, consulting, educational, and speaking engagements, Kip has had the opportunity to travel to nearly 200 cities in 21 countries on 4 continents. Kip earned his Bachelor of Science degree at Brigham Young University and his MBA at Indiana University. Kip Kreiling is also the founder of the nonprofit foundation TransformationHelp.org. The foundation is focused on improving the human condition through personal and organizational transformation, with a focus on teaching transformation classes in prisons. Most important to him, Kip has been happily married for almost 20 years and has five healthy children. For fun, Kip enjoys multiple activities in the mountains including boating, water and snow skiing, camping, and hiking."