It's Okay to Be the Boss: The Step-by-Step Guide to Becoming the Manager Your Employees Need - Hardcover

Tulgan, Bruce

Hardcover

ISBN 10: 0061121363 ISBN 13: 9780061121364

Publisher: Collins, 2007

Synopsis

Do you feel you don't have enough time to manage your people?

Do you avoid interacting with some employees because you hate the dreaded confrontations that often follow?

Do you have some great employees you really cannot afford to lose?

Do you secretly wish you could be more in control but don't know where to start?

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 hard 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 leaves even less time for managing people . . . 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 affecting managers at 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 expectations, 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!

About this title

About the Author:

Bruce Tulgan is an adviser to business leaders all over the world and a sought-after speaker and seminar leader. He is the founder of Rainmaker-Thinking, Inc., a management training firm. Bruce is the author of the classic Managing Generation X as well as Winning the Talent Wars, and has written for the New York Times, USA Today, Harvard Business Review, and Human Resources. He lives with his wife, Dr. Debby Applegate, in New Haven, Connecticut, and Portland, Oregon.

From Booklist:

Tulgan, author and expert on Generation X workers (born between 1965 and 1977), considers what he calls the epidemic of "undermanagement" in corporate America--or, the failure of managers to take daily charge of the work environment and tell employees what to do and how to do it. He identifies seven big management myths, including there not being enough time to manage people; that to be fair, everyone should be treated the same; and the desire of managers to be "nice guys." Today's change in corporate culture from long-term employees working their way up the ranks to short-term workers in flattened organizations reporting to project managers who "empower" them leads to failure, because employees are not really free and managers are not trained. The author decries managers' lack of guidance, direction, feedback, and employee support, and he responds in this book with hands-on management advice that he clearly differentiates from micromanagement. The author tells us, "Taking the first step toward effective managing takes discipline and guts." An excellent book. Mary Whaley
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About this edition

• Publisher: Collins
• Publication date: 2007
• ISBN 10: 0061121363
• ISBN 13: 9780061121364
• Binding: Hardcover
• Edition number: 1
• Number of pages: 208