Customer Reviews

The Truth About Managing People...And Nothing But the Truth

5 star:		(4)
4 star:		(5)
3 star:		(0)
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1 star:		(1)

 

 

"The truth" is long overdue... I am a massage practitioner in Seattle and people having a massage tend to say what is on their minds. I often hear comments like "my manager didn't talk to me for a year" or "I think my manager is mad at me for something I did (when in fact she just spent an hour at the car repair shop). If only she would just tell me I did a good job".
Or comments like this -"My assistant doesn't seem to work hard enough and she is starting to make mistakes that effect my work. I don't think I am doing anything wrong".
Even if you are not in management, there is a lot to learn from Steve's hard work in "The truth..."
The book is an easy read, with many examples. It presents common sense answers to everyday problems and issues. Please read it so my clients can rest during their sessions rather than worry.

Robbins's book is a pleasure to read. He presents multiple topics in a short, easily digestible modular format and then allows you to learn more by providing you with references that go into much further detail. Let's face it - most management books are worse than worthless and are either New Age fluff or bluster and swagger. Robbins instead avoids the know-it-all approach by supporting each of his 'truths' with empirical evidence from sociology, organizational psychology, assertiveness training, and literature on leadership and group dynamics.

Unless you already have a Ph.D in Social Psychology, an MBA, and 10 years' worth of corporate experience, you will learn something new with this book. You'll do more than just 'manage' - you will succeed. Use this book as a springboard and a guide, as Robbins suggests, and you will almost certainly improve your workplace performance.

Mr Robbins' best-selling book is packed with briefs on effective management thinking and examples on diverse topics. An excellent, useful, and well-organized book comprised of 63 sound nuggets of management wisdom collected from many credible sources. The 10 categories make it easy to locate an item of particular interest. The small easy-to-digest `truths' make it easy to read a different truth each morning or to devour the book in one longer sitting. Each `truth' is also well documented if you'd like to explore the item in more depth. This book makes a great refresher, introduction, or point of embarkment on further research.

Stephen P. Robbins provides a broad overview of effective management principles. While many of these principles are familiar, Robbins writes in a compelling, authoritative style, and he uses behavioral research to bolster many of his suggestions, some of which go against common practice. Skeptical? Just look at his examples of companies that have used these methods successfully, and his comments from experts in the field. The chapters are organized into a series of short bites, presented as "truths" about different areas of management. This small easy-to-carry book is handy for reading in chunks while you wait or commute on the train. We recommend it as a handy summary of general management wisdom supported by the findings of behavioral research and nicely seasoned with occasional nuggets of information on effective, but less common, techniques.

The author wisely breaks down his suggestions into 65 "truths". Each truth has its own chapter and each chapter is around 400-1000 words long.

The book was clearly written as a light read. It does not not get bogged down with pedantic explanations and research. In fact, the book cites very few research to backup its "truths". The book contains mostly anecdotal wisdom from a streetwise manager.

The author never delves into any topic in detail. If you want in-depth analysis, research, and facts to backup the author's claims, this book leaves a lot wanting. But if you want a quick and interesting anecdotal wisdom on managing people, then this book fits the bill nicely.

I thought at least a few of the 65 truths were eye opening, notably

1)Happy Workers Aren't Necessarily Productive Workers

2)The Essence of Leadership is Trust

3)Want Pleasant Employees? It's in the Genes.

4)Most People THINK They Know What Good Leaders Look Like

5)Great Followers Make Great Leaders

This book is worth its cheap price and your time.

This book is good! I recommend it to all managers and supervisors. it's worth the time to read.

Rolando Alberto

This book provides some basic information on how to manage and interact overall with people in the work place. It has helpful refresher information on group dynamics and motivation. The book is organized in 63 numbered "truths" that I thought were interesting and insightful. Each "truth" was about a page or two, so there wasn't as much detailed info on how to handle all of the situations discussed.

I agree with an other reviewer who said that there isnt much new ideas in this book. However this book is a good summary of most of the current thinking and ideas. If you have not alrady read a lot of books on management and communcation, this will be a good one for you.

Peter

This book offers absolutely NOTHING NEW about how best to deal with people. You can get much more from an article in Workforce magazine or even Fast Company. Hire the best people you can afford and then let them be who you hired them to be. If you want some good advice about dealing with employees, check out "Love 'Em or Lose 'Em," a classic.

This is a pretty good book for learning for things to look out for when managing people, but not being pro-Christian it does have some seemingly immoral suggestions, one for example is to make people dependant on you by doing things as extreme as destroying instruction booklets on how to do certain things at work, so that for someone to learn what to do they must go to you.

There is also the strange advice, "Truth 19", to not criticize the employees when they mess up but rather their messed up behavior (which seems to have something to do with the "do not judge" concept, which is often taken out of context in the Bible.) Ironically on the same page the author says to say something like this to the employee, "Bob, I'm concerned with your attitude toward your work. You were a half hour late...". Notice how the criticizing is on Bob, not his behavior?

I don't recommend this book for a newbie Christian who is a manager or who wants to be one, but for one who is solidy grounded in the Bible I wouldn't mind giving this too them. I might point out it isn't perfect in a note or something however, like the don't criticize the person contradiction, so that they don't think you're endorsing the whole book.