Customer Reviews

Truth About Managing People, The (2nd Edition)

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

 

 

This is an excellent book about "managing people" (I prefer "leading people") with 63 short myth-dispelling "truth" chapters. By the way, Charlie "Tremendous" Jones said, "You are the same today as you'll be in five years except for two things: the people you meet and the books you read."

Here's how this book will change you. It's time for the weekly staff meeting--and your interruptions have been interrupted by interruptions. Your job is to lead, inspire and motivate--and you need something fresh, but quick. This book is your CliffsNotes for all things management. Pick from 63 two-page chapters--and get this--the memorable content is not just opinion--the insights are all research-based.

Does Barack Obama (or Sarah Palin) have enough experience to be U.S. president? Eventually, yes/maybe. Author Stephen Robbins writes, "Even in the most complex jobs, real learning typically ends after two years." His research says that "experience, per se, is not a very good predictor of effectiveness. Just because a (job) candidate has 10 years of previous experience is no assurance that his or her experience will transfer to a new situation. What is relevant is the quality of previous experience and the relevance of that experience to the new situation that the leader will face." He adds, "Too often, 20 years of experience is nothing other than one year of experience repeated 20 times!"

The 63 mini-chapters are listed under 10 sections: The Truth About...Hiring, Motivation, Leadership, Communication, Building Teams, Managing Conflict, Designing Jobs, Performance Evaluation, Coping With Change and Managing Behavior. They fit well with the 20 buckets in my book, Mastering the Management Buckets: 20 Critical Competencies for Leading Your Business or Nonprofit.

The well-researched conclusions/chapter titles are compelling: Truth #4: Want Pleasant Employees? It's in the Genes! Truth #16: Not Everyone Wants to Participate in Setting Their Goals; Truth #28: Effective Leaders Know How to Frame Issues (he suggest five ways: metaphors, jargon, contrast, spin and stories); Truth #31: Charisma Can Be Learned; Truth #36: Hearing Isn't Listening (he gives eight behaviors associated with effective listening--like making eye contact); Truth #45: Not Everyone Is Team Material; and Truth #62: People Aren't Completely Rational: Don't Ignore Emotions!

"Personal references are easy to acquire but they're essentially worthless," says Robbins in the chapter, "Don't Count Too Much on Reference Checks." He says friends of applicants won't be honest with you. I tend to agree with him.

Some teams lower productivity, says the author. According to his research, "The truth is that teams often create negative synergy. Individuals expend less effort when working collectively that when working individually, so 2 + 2 can equal 3!" He calls it "social loafing." We need to look deeper at this research--it might dramatically change how we organize work.

From Chicago to Orange County last week, the senior manager in Seat 10C read the book over my shoulder--and plans to order it. That's a pretty good indicator of a great book! (Yeah--I got the dreaded middle seat.)

Bottom Line: "The Truth About Managing People" is an easy and entertaining read that provides invaluable information easily worth much more that what is being charged.

Like another reviewer said, 63 short chapters presenting truisms in 10 categories. Each two-page(ish) section provides background and description along with the short "rule" that encapsulates the concept. That's great for the Kindle (in my case iPhone) because there's no flipping back and forth. What's missing from a print addition is a handy summary of those rules to act as a summary and reminder of what you've read. That can be to your advantage if it motivates you to take a few minutes and copy from the book just the rules. By the time you're done you'll be a long way to internalizing this valuable information and improving the way you interact with others.

BTW, I feel that honest, effective reviews can take the place of first-hand experiences that are lacking in online shopping. I've always appreciated the help I've received from other reviewers and work hard to return the favor as best as I can. I hope you found this review helpful and if there was anything you thought was lacking or unclear leave a comment and I'll do what I can to fix it.

This was a very good book which offers great viewpoints to various problems in the workplace. The but comes in because I feel there could have been more examples and details. Overall a great book to keep in your desk and review quarterly to make sure you can see problems before they arise.

Robbins book is a well-written and easy to read look at managing people. The book presents 53 short chapters (not 63), in parts: i) Hiring; ii) Motivation; iii) Leadership; iv) Communication; v) Building Teams; vi) Managing Conflict; vii) Designing Jobs; viii) Performance Evaluation; ix) Coping with Change; x) Managing Behavior. That's a great set of topics of interest to any effective manager/leader.

Some of the chapters I thought were quite good: consider past behavior as the best predictor of a person's future behavior; some excellent tips on interviewing; looking first and foremost for a good 'fit' between the potential employee and your organization's culture; a productive worker is a happy worker; specific goals are much better than 'do your best'; many employee's love to participate in setting their own goals - but some really do not; specific feedback is much more helpful than generic praise or criticism; trust is essential to leadership.

There was some advice that was counterintuitive, and the author did a good job in backing up his claims with data when this was the case. The only chapter I thought was way off the mark was #25 - 'Make others dependent on you'. For example "The key to gaining power is making others dependent on you. And how do you do that? By gaining control over resources that are important and scarce." This kind of short-term thinking can be dangerous, and is at odds with leadership being about trust. That may be the key to gaining power, but it's certainly not the key to effective leadership.

The author has sought to pull together management wisdom from thousands of research studies, rather than present some academic theory of management. Overall I found the book helpful and enjoyable to read. I read the Kindle edition, and this short-chapter format is particularly well suited for an e-book format.

I have supervised people in some capacity in my professional life for about 7 years now. Early on, when I was put into a role that involved supervising 2-3 people, I learned that managing people can be challenging. Over the years, as that number has grown, I have learned that "one size" does not fit all when it comes to working with a variety of different personalities and skill sets.

This book is a great resource for any manager, whether brand new or a veteran. Robbins discusses every aspect of management from the initial interview (what type of person to look for and hire) to motivating workers, team building, communication, how organizations deal with change, etc. I learned new things about myself and about people in general that will help me in my role as a supervisor.

I took notes furiously as I was reading and there are many great quotes I could share, but I want to share one particular quote that absolutely blew me away:

What percentage of rank-and-file workers actually desire higher order need satisfactions and will respond positively to challenging jobs? No current data is available, but a study from the 1970s estimated the figure at about 15 percent.
Robbins, Stephen P. (2007-09-20). Truth About Managing People, The (2nd Edition) (p. 166). Pearson Education (US). Kindle Edition.

If you are a manager, you are likely part of that 15%, so don't treat your role lightly. Embrace the challenge and read this book. Learn how to hire, motivate and work with your employees for the greatest outcome for your company/organization.

I plan on writing a review every reading session because in this case I believe specific reviews are important because of how the book is structured.

First and foremost, I strongly recommend carefully reading. The words and sentences flow nicely but it may be easy to miss some significant meaning hidden in a single sentence.

The negative first:

The term "truth" is too strong of a word to use. Why? Because I question the author's literary review methodology and that bias - bias in the author, research and prevailing mindsets - is always a factor. One of the first issues I took is the potential inconsistency between the context of how one might use a "truth" and the contexts of the chosen research articles. One example is Truth #4 regarding brains and intelligence (IQ).

Two claims made about IQ from my experience originate in bias in the research. I could get into the problems that exist in the social sciences field but I'll keep this as concise as possible.

One claim is that IQ scores are stable over much of a person's life. Why this is made for managers is beyond me, but the truth is that IQ is dependent upon factors that can change, and much of the past research seems to have absent the treatment of important lurking variables.

Statistically, people tend to not change, largely because we have evolved to maintain homeostasis - to maintain status quo. This is an aspect of human nature from the behavioral level all the way down to the molecular level. The statistical significance of IQ stability across a population is related more to our tendency for homeostasis than anything else. In fact, this tendency may also be tied to why we look to know someone by certain traits. Regardless, drawing on those statistics have little benefit to managers in my opinion and it misses important data.

Any seasoned psychologist will tell you that a person's ability to focus and pay attention, and their cognitive organizational skills have a large influence on IQ scores. These are variables that can change. These variables are closely tied to brain structures that are not finished developing until the person is in their mid 20's.

The other claim is about proficiency - that smarter employees tend to be more proficient. It does say on average and it seems implied that this truth may be more or less relevant depending on the job. But in an industry where intelligence performance is important but work is performed in a team environment, by members who closely interact with each other and other stakeholders, those with higher IQ scores tend to have the most social problems and thus thwarts team proficiency.

And there is no correlation between IQ and reduction in cognitive fallibility and biases. A higher IQ might mean they draw the wrong conclusion much faster.

The gist of this review nugget is that IQ scores are measures of performance that can change, not ability to learn or do complicated work. Using IQ as a trait in truth #4 is in opposition to what is claimed in truth #1. This is a significant glitch in this truth.

The positive:

Truth #1 is right on in my opinion. This is consistent with a broad range of research on the human organism that spans multiple disciplines. We are attracted to evaluating individual traits much the same way our species is attracted to symmetry.

The truth is that everything is mediated by social instinct. We have evolved to be highly adaptive and automatically so to changing physical and especially social environments. If one wishes to evaluate traits, then one should consider social intelligence rather than personality trait.

Truth #2 is moderately important. In this economy employees do not have many jobs to choose from and would be much less likely to leave when the honeymoon is over. Regardless of economy loyalty is no longer a common expectation of employers.

The key to this truth I believe is the differential between the positive and negative aspects of a job - the larger the differential the more likely new hires will quit earlier than usual (in some industries 5 years is a long time at one employer).

Truth #3 is in my experience, right on. Not much to say about this one as I pretty much agree with every word failing to find anything noteworthy I might add.

I skimmed many of the others but will cover them later. So far this is shaping up to be a great book.

Some interesting insights, but mostly platitudes that you don't need to read about. Anyone that manages people could enumerate some of the points made in this book. Worth a read for first time managers, but noth worth the time for seasoned managers.

and I got it as a freebie on Kindle so all the better. I love reading this sort of thing and this is exactly the sort of manager I want to be so completely resonated with me

I was very please with the condtion and timeframe that it took to receive the book.