Gary B. Cohen – författare

John T. Chain, Jr., rose from a second lieutenantto four-star general and led ournational missile defense program.

Mike Harper led ConAgra Foods from$636 million to $20 billion in 20 years andincreased its stocks value 150 times over.

Ask Gary Cohen what these remarkable leadershave in common and his answer will bestraightforward: They use questions to generatefresh ideas, inspire committed action, andbuild an army of forward-thinking leaders.

In Just Ask Leadership, Cohen steers you awayfrom the all-too-common idea that if youdon’t assert yourself with strong statements,you will not be respected. On the contrary,statistics prove that 95 percent of employeesprefer to be asked questions rather than betold what to do. Involving employees andcolleagues in decision making processesbuilds an environment rich with energy, excitement,and innovative problem solving.

Just Ask Leadership outlines not only specificquestions to ask in certain contexts, but alsohow to implement question-based leadershipas a whole. Learn how to

When you ask questions, you show respect—and you are respected in turn. It is thatsimple.

A combination of Cohen’s proven expertiseand interviews with nearly 100 highly effectiveleaders, Just Ask Leadership explains howto harness the power of questions to makeyour organization more competitive, moreprofitable, and a better place to work.

The period of the baroque (late sixteenth to mid-eighteenth centuries) saw extensive reconfiguration of European cities and their public spaces. Yet, this transformation cannot be limited merely to signifying a style of art, architecture, and decor. Rather, the dynamism, emotionality, and potential for grandeur that were inherent in the baroque style developed in close interaction with the need and desire of post-Reformation Europeans to find visual expression for the new political, confessional, and societal realities. Highly illustrated, this volume examines these complex interrelationships among architecture and art, power, religion, and society from a wide range of viewpoints and localities. From Krakow to Madrid and from Naples to Dresden, cities were reconfigured visually as well as politically and socially. Power, in both its political and architectural guises, had to be negotiated among constituents ranging from monarchs and high churchmen to ordinary citizens. Within this process, both rulers and ruled were transformed: Europe left behind the last vestiges of the medieval and arrived on the threshold of the modern.

Early modern Central Europe was the continent’s most decentralized region politically and its most diverse ethnically and culturally. With the onset of the Reformation, it also became Europe’s most religiously divided territory and potentially its most explosive in terms of confessional conflict and war. Focusing on the Holy Roman Empire and the Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth, this volume examines the tremendous challenge of managing confessional diversity in Central Europe between 1500 and 1800. Addressing issues of tolerance, intolerance, and ecumenism, each chapter explores a facet of the complex dynamic between the state and the region’s Catholic, Protestant, Orthodox, Utraquist, and Jewish communities. The development of religious toleration—one of the most debated questions of the early modern period—is examined here afresh, with careful consideration of the factors and conditions that led to both confessional concord and religious violence.

In Europe and around the world, social policies and welfare services have faced increasing pressure in recent years as a result of political, economic, and social changes. Just as Europe was a leader in the development of the welfare state and the supportive structures of corporatist politics from the 1920s onward, Europe in particular has experienced stresses from globalization and striking innovation in welfare policies. While debates in the United Kingdom, Germany, and France often attract wide international attention, smaller European countries—Belgium, Denmark, Austria, or Finland—are often overlooked. This volume seeks to correct this unfortunate oversight as these smaller countries serve as models for reform, undertaking experiments that only later gain the attention of stymied reformers in the larger countries.

With the enlargement of the European Union, the accession countries are coming under pressure to develop and meet EU standards for environmental protection and sustainable development. In this ongoing process, global economic liberalization, regulatory policy, conservation, and lifestyle issues are all involved, and creative solutions will have to be found. Historians, geographers, economists, ecologists, business management experts, public policy specialists, and community organizers have come together in this volume and examine, for the first time, environmental issues ranging from national and regional policy and macroeconomics to local studies in community regeneration. The evidence suggests that, far from being mere passive recipients of instruction and assistance from outside, the people of Central and East Central Europe have been engaged actively in working out solutions to these problems. Several promising cases illustrate opportunities to overcome crisis situations and offer examples of good practices, while others pose warnings. The experiences of these countries in wrestling with issues of sustainability continue to be of importance to policy development within the EU and may serve also as examples for both developed and developing countries worldwide.

Multiculturalism has long been linked to calls for tolerance of cultural diversity, but today many observers are subjecting the concept to close scrutiny. After the political upheavals of 1968, the commitment to multiculturalism was perceived as a liberal manifesto, but in the post-9/11 era, it is under attack for its relativizing, particularist, and essentializing implications. The essays in this collection offer a nuanced analysis of the multifaceted cultural experience of Central Europe under the late Habsburg monarchy and beyond. The authors examine how culturally coded social spaces can be described and understood historically without adopting categories formerly employed to justify the definition and separation of groups into nations, ethnicities, or homogeneous cultures. As we consider the issues of multiculturalism today, this volume offers new approaches to understanding multiculturalism in Central Europe freed of the effects of politically exploited concepts of social spaces.