Management Mastery and Practice Series

Management Mastery and Practice Series is suited to a range of managers. You might be a newly promoted manager or about to step into a greater managerial role with increased responsibilities. Or perhaps you have been in a management position for some years' time but have had no formal management training, or you are an executive leader but have simply forgotten some of the basics of leading and managing yourself and others. Whichever length of time you have been managing, this series is to help you deal with people management including cultural diversity issues, systemic issues within the organization in which you work, and to develop effective communication and coaching skills, the ability to manage conflict, difficult situations, company politics and career development.

The authors look at how to motivate staff and teams, understand motivation and demotivation, manage stress, build better performance with effective communications and well-run meetings, build great teams, and prepare leaders for the future. Each book includes theory, research, case studies, practical exercises, and tips on how to handle challenges - avoiding the pitfalls that can cause managers to fail. Your effectiveness as a leader-manager depends on what support you can expect from your staff, direct reports, and team members. This series will help you to build your skills and competence, developing your own unique signature as a leader and a manager.

Being a leader-manager requires both skills of management and leadership. Everything you ever wanted to know about managing people but were afraid to ask covers essential aspects of both. Identifying and solving your most challenging people problems quickly and motivating your people to perform at their highest potential. Understanding when to lead and when to manage, taking a deeper dive into self-awareness and self-management, delegating to develop your team, broadening your range of communication skills in order to inspire and motivate people and managing difficult people and situations. However, the most important competence that is essential for stepping into being a leader-manager is that of self-awareness, conscious observation and understanding yourself at a deeper level to lead and manage people. It is critically important that you understand and know how your teams 'experience' you - because this is the path towards identifying what change is needed in terms of your own assumptions about yourself and others, and understanding your own thinking, feeling and behaviour at a deeper level. In this book there are clear guidelines, cases studies, practical exercises, and self-assessments to move you into greater competence as a leader-manager.

Sunny Stout-Rostron is a director of People Quotient (Pty) Ltd, a Doctoral Supervisor at several business schools, a member of the Management Coaching faculty of the School of Business at the University of Stellenbosch, part-time faculty at the South African College of Applied Psychology, and on the global faculty for Time to Think, Inc. She is a Founding Fellow at the Institute of Coaching at McLean Hospital, a Harvard Medical School Affiliate, and Founding President of Coaches and Mentors of South Africa (COMENSA). She has also authored six books.

Michael Taylor, is an experienced facilitator, international management consultant, and master coach, Michael has deep expertise in understanding and implementing culture change, building world-class teams and developing global leaders. He experienced first-hand the excitement of running profitable high engagement businesses, which included managing a team of 25 professional consultants. Michael is managing director of Xponential (Pty) Ltd, a professional services firm he founded in 2006, and a director of People Quotient (Pty) Ltd. Michael is a qualified organisational behaviourist and Master Coach and completed his MPhil in management coaching at the Stellenbosch University Graduate School of Business (USB).