Customer Reviews

The Mastery of Management

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This book is an excellent approach on how to manage personalities in the work place. It is a good tool for managers and supervisors to help them increase productivity among their supervisees. It helps understand why people do what they do, what they really need and how to give it to them.

The basic attempt Dr. Kahler is making is to categorize the entire world into six broad personality types. This seemingly simplistic (and somewhat arrogant) approach does have one obvious advantage - its manageable. You can relatively easily get the point, remember the details and go ahead and try to use it for real. And to some extent, it actually works.
According to Kahler, people are roughly divided to six basic personality types - Reactor, Workaholic, Persister, Rebel, Dreamer and Promoter. The book gives a straightforward way to identify each character type and then discusses the way to motivate that specific type of person.
The whole book is presented in a form of a story following a single day in the life of an American corporation and makes observations about the six characters, representing each of the six types. This makes the book quite readable, but also a little childish and constrained by its artificial structure.
Overall, I think it's a nice book with a very unorthodox approach to personality-based management. Think of it as the eat-by-your-blood-type version of people management. It could have been better written, better edited and more complete. But given its current state, it's still worth your while.