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Book 2: Leading Beyond Labels: Introduction: What This Book Is About
Pop me message to read out loud!
Most leadership books tell you how to understand people better. This one asks whether the tools you have been using to do that were ever really fit for purpose.
Leading Beyond Labels is the book that takes on the personality industrial complex, the multibillion-dollar system of tests, typologies, and frameworks that promise to decode human behaviour and deliver it back to you in four letters, a colour, or a number. It is a system that feels scientific, reassuring, and efficient. It is also, for a significant portion of the workforce, quietly and consistently wrong.
In this introduction, Nicola Knobel sets out what drove her to write this book: years of working in leadership, being assessed, profiled, and labelled, while knowing the results did not quite fit. As an AuDHD leader who received her diagnosis as an adult, she spent a long time assuming the gap between the label and the lived experience was her problem. It was not. It was the tool.
This book is for leaders who want to do better. It is for HR professionals who have started to notice the cracks in the frameworks they rely on. It is for neurodivergent people who have sat in a workshop, looked at their results, and thought: that is not me. And it is for anyone who has ever felt that the system designed to include them was, in practice, quietly filtering them out.
Part one unpacks the history and psychology of personality testing, including its roots in military classification, eugenics, and the desire to make human beings predictable. Part two examines the most widely used frameworks, including Myers-Briggs, the Enneagram, DISC, the Big Five, TMP, StrengthsFinder, and emerging AI-driven systems, and looks honestly at what the evidence says about each of them. Part three turns to neurodivergent experience specifically, examining recruitment, employment, and what it costs organisations to keep designing for a narrow version of human. Part four offers something different: practical, evidence-based models for leading, hiring, and building teams without relying on labels.
Subscribe to access the full audio book at www.nicolaknobel.com
Support the show
Purchase the book here: https://amzn.to/43cRqV4
JOIN ME OVER AT:
Instagram: http://instagram.com/nicola.knobel
YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/@NikiKnobel?sub_confirmation=1
Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/nicolaknobel.audhd
Threads: https://www.threads.com/@nicola.knobel
__________________________________________________
⚠️NOTE:
I’m not a medical professional. This video is based on lived experience, research, and educational insights. Please speak to a qualified healthcare provider for medical advice, diagnosis, or treatment.
This description contains affiliate links that allow you to find the items mentioned in this video and support the channel at no cost to you. While this channel may earn minimal sums when the viewer uses the links, the viewer is in NO WAY obligated to use these links. Thank you for your support!
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By Nicola KnobelPop me message to read out loud!
Most leadership books tell you how to understand people better. This one asks whether the tools you have been using to do that were ever really fit for purpose.
Leading Beyond Labels is the book that takes on the personality industrial complex, the multibillion-dollar system of tests, typologies, and frameworks that promise to decode human behaviour and deliver it back to you in four letters, a colour, or a number. It is a system that feels scientific, reassuring, and efficient. It is also, for a significant portion of the workforce, quietly and consistently wrong.
In this introduction, Nicola Knobel sets out what drove her to write this book: years of working in leadership, being assessed, profiled, and labelled, while knowing the results did not quite fit. As an AuDHD leader who received her diagnosis as an adult, she spent a long time assuming the gap between the label and the lived experience was her problem. It was not. It was the tool.
This book is for leaders who want to do better. It is for HR professionals who have started to notice the cracks in the frameworks they rely on. It is for neurodivergent people who have sat in a workshop, looked at their results, and thought: that is not me. And it is for anyone who has ever felt that the system designed to include them was, in practice, quietly filtering them out.
Part one unpacks the history and psychology of personality testing, including its roots in military classification, eugenics, and the desire to make human beings predictable. Part two examines the most widely used frameworks, including Myers-Briggs, the Enneagram, DISC, the Big Five, TMP, StrengthsFinder, and emerging AI-driven systems, and looks honestly at what the evidence says about each of them. Part three turns to neurodivergent experience specifically, examining recruitment, employment, and what it costs organisations to keep designing for a narrow version of human. Part four offers something different: practical, evidence-based models for leading, hiring, and building teams without relying on labels.
Subscribe to access the full audio book at www.nicolaknobel.com
Support the show
Purchase the book here: https://amzn.to/43cRqV4
JOIN ME OVER AT:
Instagram: http://instagram.com/nicola.knobel
YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/@NikiKnobel?sub_confirmation=1
Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/nicolaknobel.audhd
Threads: https://www.threads.com/@nicola.knobel
__________________________________________________
⚠️NOTE:
I’m not a medical professional. This video is based on lived experience, research, and educational insights. Please speak to a qualified healthcare provider for medical advice, diagnosis, or treatment.
This description contains affiliate links that allow you to find the items mentioned in this video and support the channel at no cost to you. While this channel may earn minimal sums when the viewer uses the links, the viewer is in NO WAY obligated to use these links. Thank you for your support!