Title: It’s Okay to Be the Boss: the Step-by-Step Guide to
Becoming the Great Manager Your Employees Need
Author: Tulgan, Bruce
Call Number: 658.409 T917I 2007
Subjects: Executives; Leadership
Number of Pages: 196
ISBN: 9780061121364
Book Description
(from front and back flaps):
Managing
people is harder and more high-pressure today than ever before. There’s no room
for downtime, waste, or inefficiency. You have to do more with less. And
employees have become high maintenance. Not only are they more likely to
disagree openly and push back, but they also won’t work harder for vague
promises of long-term rewards. They look to you-their immediate boss-to help
them get what they need and want at work.
How do you
tackle this huge management challenge? If you are like most managers, you take
a hands-off approach. You “empower” employees by leaving them alone, unless
they really need you. After all, you don’t want to micromanage them and don’t
have the time to hold every employee’s hand. Of course, problems always come up
and often snowball into bigger problems. In fact, you probably spend too much
of your time solving problems and falling behind on your work…which opens the
door for even more problems!
In it’s
Okay to Be the Boss, Bruce Tulgan puts his finger on the biggest problem in
corporate America-an undermanagement epidemic after managers all levels of the
organization and in all industries-and offers another way. His clear,
step-by-step guide to becoming the strong manager employees need challenges
bosses everywhere to spell out expectation, tell employees exactly what to do
and how to do it, monitor and measure performance constantly, and correct
failure quickly and reward success even more quickly. Now that’s how you set
employees up for success and help them earn what they need.
Tulgan
opens our eyes to the undisciplined workplace that is overwhelming managers and
frustrating workers and invites bosses everywhere to accept the sacred
responsibility of managing people. His message: It’s okay to be the boss. Be a
great one!
My Read:
Here is
what I think after reading this book: It’s Not okay to be the boss if you don’t
have guts and are afraid of taking challenges and making them into
possibilities to grow not only your staff but also yourself. There are risks
that you might have to trade in your soul and positive energy to do the job if
you want to be a Great boss. If only you want to a great one.
The deals
the author has for the readers are: 1) get in the habit of managing every day,
2) learn to talk like a performance coach, 3) take it one person at a time, 4)
make accountability a real process, 5) tell people what to do and how to do it,
6) track performance every step of the way, 7) solve small problems before they
turn into big problems, and 8) do more for some people and less for others.
Plenty of the concepts and ideas are common sense. Yet as a good friend told me
“Common sense is not really common.” Things got interesting when you have a
person’s background checked and listed. Things got more complicated if you have
a group of people working under the same roof.
The most
helpful tip for me from the book comes from page 57. The author lists 6
questions about each employee for the manager-to-be readers. They are:
Who is this person at work?
Why do I need to manage this person?
What do I need to talk about with this person?
How should I talk with this person?
Where should I talk with this person?
When should I talk with this person?
Other
helpful tips are: 1) “Talk, talk, talk about the work. Work is what you have (the
manager and the staff) in common; in fact, it’s the reason you have a
relationship at all.” –page 46The author warns the manager-to-be to avoid
pitfall being the Mr./Ms. Friend. 2) “When you diagnose a performance problem,
start focusing intensely in your regular management conversations on spelling
out concrete solutions”- page 128. 3) “It is never helpful to name a behavior
if you are trying to get someone to change it. Instead, describe behavior”-page
129. 3) In the case of persistent performance problems, the real question is:
“What demotivates a person?”-page 133
The idea
the author has “solve small problems before they turn into big problems” is
pretty powerful and helpful. A puddle is made of and starts with a drop of
rain. And if one doesn’t pay attention to and be aware of the puddle in the
middle of the road the encounter with that puddle might become fatal.
To become a
manager is not too hard; one could always follow and maintain the status quo
and undermanage the employees. To be the boss who is responsible and who cares
about people is a challenge that one has to muster courage, acquire different
people skills, and be ready to take risks to overcome obstacles and beat the
odds.
Are you
ready and willing to take the risky ride? Be great? Ask more questions or just
do it? I wonder…
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