Peer Review

Drink, Swear, Steal, and Lie: Leadership in Four Easy Steps

Material Detail page

Reviewed:: Apr 18, 2022 by Business

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Ratings

Overall Rating:

Content Quality:

Effectiveness:

Ease of Use:

Overview:

Drink, Swear, Steal, and Lie: Leadership in Four Easy Steps is based on a near forty year career of a Police Chief. This is not a how-to text on becoming a leader (albeit there are encounters with leadership characteristics and styles), but rather an inspiring essential on why one should become a leader. This text was primarily written to satisfy a Leadership course in Criminal Justice Programs. However, it will meet the needs of most leadership/management courses introduced in other curriculums. This text examines maintenance as a key factor for leaders, creating environments conducive to well-ordered organizations, being a risk taker/change agent and empowering others to do the same, and coaching.

Type of Material:

Open (Access) Textbook

Recommended Uses:

This can be used as a primary text, specific assignments can supplement class activities or be used for homework, individual assignments and team assignments, and as supplemental lecture material. A case study is included in chapter 7.

Technical Requirements:

Google Chrome Version 96.0.4664.110

Adobe Reader

Mozilla Firefox 95.0.1

Chrome 96

Identify Major Learning Goals:

To develop leadership skills through selective chapter readings discussing life experiences or literature reviews.
To create environments conducive to well-ordered organizations
To be a risk-taker/change agent

Target Student Population:

Chapters 3-14 are recommended for general audiences and college course levels.
Chapter IV is more academic for undergraduate courses.

Prerequisite Knowledge or Skills:

The reader would require an understanding of management and leadership principles as well as computer navigation skills to read it.

Content Quality

Rating:

Strengths:

The book is based in leadership principles from Ken Blanchard and Peter Drucker, as two examples
“The biggest communication problem is we do not listen to understand; we listen to reply” (chapter 2) is a key concept in leadership.
The ebook has several recommendations to understand and improve leadership skills.
The author uses examples and plain terminology such as creativity, open-mindedness, and loyalty among others to make the reading simple.

Concerns:

Chapter I should be removed. It is difficult to read because each sentence conveys a different idea unrelated to the others. Paragraphs and sentences lack coherence. I ran a readability statistics tool on a couple of pages, and it returned a difficult reading analysis.
The ebook needs proofreading. For example, most of the level-2 heading titles end with a period. There are also spelling errors such as “capapility” for capability in Chapter XI.
Some middle chapters are too short and should be combined or re-arranged to fit a single chapter.
The use of first and second person is distracting
Some chapters seem to wander around high-level leadership principles and are lacking in citations (Ken Blanchard, for example).

Potential Effectiveness as a Teaching Tool

Rating:

Strengths:

Real-life application is demonstrated by the author's personal experiences.
Stories and applications are effective teaching applications.
Some of the chapters can be used as study materials to enhance case study analysis and to analyze leadership successes and failures through real-life examples.

Concerns:

Sometimes the reader must “dig out” some of the key principles in the discussion and read around the story being told to pull out the main points.
The instructor must guide which chapters can enrich student learning. As stated earlier, Chapter I should not be recommended to the student.

Ease of Use for Both Students and Faculty

Rating:

Strengths:

This is easy to read
Easy to understand in terms of application.

Concerns:

The site does not have usability features to review content for accessibility and compliance.
Some of the concepts “such as providing insight into a process in order to facilitate interpersonal relationships and broaden communication” in chapter 3, page 32, do not directly provide these insights and must be “discovered” and therefore can be unclear at times.

Other Issues and Comments:

For the purposes of this review, chapters 1, 2, and 3 were reviewed. Although this is based on the context of police work, the leadership principles can be applied in a variety of situations.
The ebook could use other reviewers to incorporate more ideas for improvement.

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