By Bob Rosner
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First tagged by Steven Byrd
Customer tags: personal development, leadership, business books, professional development, great leadership, business leadership, business, effective management
Review & Description
In today’s booming economy, there are more jobs than there are qualified people to fill them. Retaining those qualified employees has become a manager’s top priority. Today’s managers not only need to make sure their employees are productive, but also need to make sure their employees remain satisfied and motivated—otherwise employees will leave.
According to recent surveys, what really causes employees to stay or drives them away is “the boss,” and not money or perks. That means that managers need to learn how to manage in ways that will attract qualified workers and make them want to stay. Short on theory and long on hands-on, real-world advice and guidance, this survival guide:
• Tells managers, in plain English, why and how they need to change the way they operate in order to hold on to valued employees
• Covers all the bases, including hiring and orientation, team-building, coaching, setting expectations, painless performance appraisals, and other day-to-day issues
• Features Rosner’s trademark humor— well-known to the tens of thousands of loyal readers of his nationally syndicated column, “Working Wounded”If managing people once felt like a stay at the Taj Mahal, today it's more like a visit to Beirut's Commodore Hotel, where guests were asked upon check-in, "Sniper side or shelling side?" As author and columnist Bob Rosner pointed out in his earlier book, Working Wounded, bosses are poked from above and prodded from below. How to cope? The Boss's Survival Guide aims to give managers tools for handling the shrapnel. Its 430 pages discuss the 65 most vexing challenges bosses face today, including how to screen out jerks when hiring, how to let people go fairly and legally, how to change an employee's problem behavior, and how to keep people motivated.
Don't let the size of The Boss's Survival Guide daunt you; this is not a book to sit and read cover to cover. It's meant as a reference tool, a kind of Physician's Desk Reference for help when you're facing a specific dilemma. Which is not to say it's a dull read. On the contrary, the authors (who, in addition to Rosner, include Allan Halcrow, former editor of Workforce magazine, and Alan Levins, an employment attorney) have worked overtime to present the information in humorous, easy-to-digest snapshots. Each chapter is divided into four sections: a short background area called "Know the Issue"; a set of concrete action steps; a highly useful section called "Stay out of Jail"; and "Manage Up," a short section on how to handle your own boss. Most chapters also include brief real-world examples and indicate where to go if you need more information on a particular problem.
Overall, the book is a comprehensive, highly readable reference tool that would be of use to both new and seasoned managers. In a cover quote, business luminary Ken Blanchard writes, "This book has everything you'll ever need to know about being an effective boss but don't have time to learn." He's right on the money. --Charles Decker Read more
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