The Hands-off Manager


Book Description

Today's employees do not respond to the old hands-on, militaristic management styles. They are highly independant, individual professionals with their own fully developed ideas. Leaders and managers who try to micro-manage them will inevitably confrom wide-spread disgruntlement, absenteeism, and turnover...and increase their and their employees stress levels. Chandler and Black offer a new vision for all managers. With stories, examples, and vibrant activities for the reader to practice, this book shows any manager, new or seasoned, how to coach and mentor employees rather than hover over their shoulders and goad them into action.




The Set-up-to-fail Syndrome


Book Description

Annotation.




Ask a Manager


Book Description

From the creator of the popular website Ask a Manager and New York’s work-advice columnist comes a witty, practical guide to 200 difficult professional conversations—featuring all-new advice! There’s a reason Alison Green has been called “the Dear Abby of the work world.” Ten years as a workplace-advice columnist have taught her that people avoid awkward conversations in the office because they simply don’t know what to say. Thankfully, Green does—and in this incredibly helpful book, she tackles the tough discussions you may need to have during your career. You’ll learn what to say when • coworkers push their work on you—then take credit for it • you accidentally trash-talk someone in an email then hit “reply all” • you’re being micromanaged—or not being managed at all • you catch a colleague in a lie • your boss seems unhappy with your work • your cubemate’s loud speakerphone is making you homicidal • you got drunk at the holiday party Praise for Ask a Manager “A must-read for anyone who works . . . [Alison Green’s] advice boils down to the idea that you should be professional (even when others are not) and that communicating in a straightforward manner with candor and kindness will get you far, no matter where you work.”—Booklist (starred review) “The author’s friendly, warm, no-nonsense writing is a pleasure to read, and her advice can be widely applied to relationships in all areas of readers’ lives. Ideal for anyone new to the job market or new to management, or anyone hoping to improve their work experience.”—Library Journal (starred review) “I am a huge fan of Alison Green’s Ask a Manager column. This book is even better. It teaches us how to deal with many of the most vexing big and little problems in our workplaces—and to do so with grace, confidence, and a sense of humor.”—Robert Sutton, Stanford professor and author of The No Asshole Rule and The Asshole Survival Guide “Ask a Manager is the ultimate playbook for navigating the traditional workforce in a diplomatic but firm way.”—Erin Lowry, author of Broke Millennial: Stop Scraping By and Get Your Financial Life Together




Managing Up


Book Description

Build vital connections to accelerate your career success Managing Up is your guide to the most valuable 'soft skill' your career has ever seen. It's not about sucking up or brown-nosing; it's about figuring out who you are, who your boss is, and finding where you meet. It's about building real relationships with people who have influence over your career. Managing up is good for you, good for your boss, and good for the organization as a whole. This book gives you strategies for developing these all-important connections and building more than rapport; you become able to quickly assess situations, and determine which actions will move you forward; you become your own talent manager, and your boss's top choice for that new opportunity. As a skill, managing up can do more for your career than simply 'networking' ever could—and this book shows you how. Real-world strategies give you a set of actionable steps, supplemented by expert advice from a top leadership consultant that helps you get on track to advancement. It's never too early or too late to start adjusting your alignment, and this book provides the help you need to start accelerating your trajectory. Develop robust relationships with influential people Enhance your self-awareness and become more adaptable Gain new opportunities and accelerate your career Stop 'schmoozing' and develop true, lasting connections Managing up helps you build the sort of relationships that foster more communication, collaboration, cooperation, and understanding between people at different levels of power, with a variety of perspectives and skills. This type of bridge-building builds your reputation for effectiveness and fit, so you can start skipping rungs on the ladder as you build a strong, successful career. Managing Up is your personal manual for building this vital skill so you can begin building your best future.




Radical Candor


Book Description

Radical Candor is the sweet spot between managers who are obnoxiously aggressive on the one side and ruinously empathetic on the other. It is about providing guidance, which involves a mix of praise as well as criticism, delivered to produce better results and help employees develop their skills and boundaries of success. Great bosses have a strong relationship with their employees, and Kim Scott Malone has identified three simple principles for building better relationships with your employees: make it personal, get stuff done, and understand why it matters. Radical Candor offers a guide to those bewildered or exhausted by management, written for bosses and those who manage bosses. Drawing on years of first-hand experience, and distilled clearly to give actionable lessons to the reader, Radical Candor shows how to be successful while retaining your integrity and humanity. Radical Candor is the perfect handbook for those who are looking to find meaning in their job and create an environment where people both love their work, their colleagues and are motivated to strive to ever greater success.




The One Minute Manager Meets the Monkey


Book Description

When a person goes to the boss with a problem and the boss agrees to do something about it, the monkey is off his back and onto the boss's. How can managers avoid these leaping monkeys? Here is priceless advice from three famous experts: how managers can meet their own priorities, give back other people's monkeys, and let them solve their own problems.




Hands Off Manager


Book Description

The number one reason cited in exit interviews for an employee quitting is "“my manager.” Most managers and executives not only aren’t aware of this obvious problem, but probably wouldn’t know what to do about it if they did.Today's employees do not respond to the old hands-on, militaristic management styles. They are highly independent, individual professionals with their own fully developed ideas. Leaders and managers who try to micro-manage them will inevitably confront wide-spread disgruntlement, absenteeism, and turnoverG++o--1⁄4and increase their own and their employees’ stress levels. In The Hands-Off Manager, Chandler and Black offer a new vision for all managers. With stories, examples, and vibrant activities for the reader to practice, this book shows any manager—new or seasoned—how to coach and mentor employees rather than hover over their shoulders and goad them into action. In this system, each employee's strengths are honored and honed in a climate of partnership and mutual goal-setting. Chandler, whose 100 Ways to Motivate Others is a bestselling favorite with small and large businesses alike, has called The Hands-Off Manager "“my most original work to date” because it finally solves the age-old problem of getting the best performance out of people without frustrating yourself and them.The Hands-Off Manager and its breakthrough content will take its place beside In Search of Excellence, The One Minute Manager, and Who Moved My Cheese as an instant classic that will forever change the way we lead and manage.Steve Chandler is one of America's best-selling authors whose 14 books—including the best-sellers 100 Ways to Motivate Others, 100 Ways to Motivate Yourself, and Reinventing Yourself—have been translated into more than 15 languages. Chandler was recently named to the faculty at the University of Santa Monica and also starred in an episode of NBC’s Starting Over, the Emmy-award-winning reality show about life-coaching. Chandler has been a trainer and consultant to more than 30 Fortune 500 companies worldwide. Duane Black is the executive vice president and chief operating officer of SunCor Developments, where he oversees 150 employees and more than 150,000 acres of current and future housing developments




Do Nothing!


Book Description

Award-winning business professor Keith Murnighan teaches us how doing less will get you more in Do Nothing!Would you like to go on holiday without having to check daily that your team is doing its job? Can you turn off your phone and your email, knowing that everything is under control?For most managers this is just a dream. But Do Nothing! reveals that such a 'hands off' approach is both achievable and highly effective.In this compelling and imaginative book, award-winning business professor Keith Murnighan shows how really successful leaders create a culture of independence and trust. Identify the team members who you can rely on - then step aside and let them do their jobs. With a raft of provocative suggestions ('ignore performance goals!', 'de-emphasize profits!'), Do Nothing! proves that behaving naturally can work against you. Doing less will get you more.'A compelling analysis...Allows leaders to both work less and be better at their craft' Robert Cialdini, author of Influence'This rare book provides a refreshing perspective and tangible advice on leadership that isn't available anyplace else' Bob Sutton, author of The No Asshole Rule J. Keith Murnighan is an award-winning professor at the Kellogg School of Management at Northwestern University and an active consul­tant and trainer for a host of companies around the world. His research has been cited in The Wall Street Journal, The New York Times, The Econo­mist, and Forbes. He lives in Evanston, Illinois.




The Connector Manager


Book Description

There are four distinct types of managers. One performs much worse than the rest, and one performs far better. Which type are you? Based on a first-of-its-kind, wide-ranging global study of over 9,000 people, analysts at the global research and advisory firm Gartner were able to classify all managers into one of four types: Teacher managers, who develop employees' skills based on their own expertise and direct their development along a similar track to their own. Cheerleader managers, who give positive feedback while taking a general hands-off approach to employee development. Always-on managers, who provide constant, frequent feedback and coaching on all aspects of the employee's performance. Connector managers, who provide feedback in their area of expertise while connecting employees to others in the team or organization who are better suited to address specific needs. Although the four types of managers are more or less evenly distributed, the Connector manager consistently outperforms the others by a significant margin. Meanwhile, Always-on managers tend to see their employees struggle to grow within the organization. Why is that? Drawing on their groundbreaking data-driven research, as well as in-depth case studies and extensive interviews with managers and employees at companies like IBM, Accenture, and eBay, the authors show what behaviors define a Connector manager, and why they are able to build powerhouse teams. They also show why other types of managers fail to be equally effective, and how they can incorporate behaviors of Connector managers in order to be more effective at building teams.




Team of Teams


Book Description

From the New York Times bestselling author of My Share of the Task and Leaders, a manual for leaders looking to make their teams more adaptable, agile, and unified in the midst of change. When General Stanley McChrystal took command of the Joint Special Operations Task Force in 2004, he quickly realized that conventional military tactics were failing. Al Qaeda in Iraq was a decentralized network that could move quickly, strike ruthlessly, then seemingly vanish into the local population. The allied forces had a huge advantage in numbers, equipment, and training—but none of that seemed to matter. To defeat Al Qaeda, they would have to combine the power of the world’s mightiest military with the agility of the world’s most fearsome terrorist network. They would have to become a "team of teams"—faster, flatter, and more flexible than ever. In Team of Teams, McChrystal and his colleagues show how the challenges they faced in Iraq can be rel­evant to countless businesses, nonprofits, and or­ganizations today. In periods of unprecedented crisis, leaders need practical management practices that can scale to thousands of people—and fast. By giving small groups the freedom to experiment and share what they learn across the entire organiza­tion, teams can respond more quickly, communicate more freely, and make better and faster decisions. Drawing on compelling examples—from NASA to hospital emergency rooms—Team of Teams makes the case for merging the power of a large corporation with the agility of a small team to transform any organization.